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Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas is taking the Toronto Sun to task after the newspaper’s latest edition featured a graphic photo of injured team captain John Tavares.
Tavares was hurt during Friday’s game with the Montreal Canadiens, slamming his head on a player’s knee after he was hit by Canadiens defenseman Ben Chiarot.
Atop the photo of the dazed and bloodied Tavares, the Sun ran the headline, “Captain Crunched.”
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On Saturday, Dubas spoke with Sports Illustrated via Zoom, offering an update on Tavares’ condition and slamming the Sun for its “extraordinarily insensitive” cover.
“Situations like these garner a significant amount of coverage but as an organization we felt yesterday that the Toronto Sun cover of their newspaper crossed the line and we found the cover to be disgusting,” he said.
“We just thought that it was extraordinarily insensitive on the part of the Sun with regards to the photo and the caption that accompanied the situation yesterday,” he continued. “Just a complete lack of compassion and respect on behalf of the Sun towards John and his family, especially for such an upstanding member of our organization and community and his family that had to endure that.”
According to Dubas, Tavares received a CT scan and an MRI, which determined he suffered no structural damage to his head, neck and spine.
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However, he did injure his knee and suffer a concussion, and will require a minimum of two weeks to recover.
“I think the knee injury you can give a timeline on but the head injury and concussion is very difficult to place a timeline [on],” Dubas explained. “We handle those in a very conservative nature and handle them very sensitively.”
According to SI, the Sun hasn’t yet responded to the widespread backlash against the cover.
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