from Ed Willes of the Vancouver Province,

All this, of course, raises any number of uncomfortable questions for TSN and Sportsnet, which are NHL rights holders and also have an ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Did the decision to spike the story come from corporate headquarters? Did it come from the Leafs?

Simmons, who’s been a longtime contributor on TSN, poked around for some answers and got some conflicting messages. One suggested Matthews’s positive test was a personal health matter, which made it out of bounds. But both TSN and Sportsnet reported on the positive COVID tests of, among others, Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott and Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell.

Why is Matthews different?

Can’t tell you. But we can tell you it’s part of a media landscape in which the lines between teams and the people who report on them have been blurred beyond recognition; a landscape where every attempt is made to manage availability in order to create homogeneous storylines; where access to information and sources is directly linked to what’s reported and when it’s reported.

This, of course, serves the purposes of the leagues and their individual teams. It just doesn’t serve the purposes of their audience but, over time, that’s also changed. Fans seem willing to consume news served in a diluted form. Either that or they’ve been conditioned to accept it. Don’t know.

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