Opinion: What's In a Word? OHL's Landon Sim Suspension Raises Questions

Landon Sim of the London Knights is sitting out during the OHL final after an on-ice confrontation. But there was almost no due process, says Ken Campbell.

While his teammates are on the ice competing for the ultimate prize in the OHL, Landon Sim of the London Knights is on the sidelines with a five-game suspension that has raised its fair share of questions.

One of them surrounds what words should be considered offensive or bullying and how severely they should be punished. The other has to do with the powers of league commissioner David Branch, who has headed the league for 45 years and is due to retire after this season.

It all began the night of May 3 when the Knights were playing Game 5 of their Western Conference final series against the Saginaw Spirit. According to Sim’s agent, Andrew Maloney, Sim made contact with a Spirit forward during the pre-game warm-up. Then, midway through the second period, the agent alleged a defenseman on the Spirit confronted Sim at a faceoff and threatened to “break (his) shoulder.” According to Maloney, Sim has a shoulder sprain and has been freezing it before games.

Sim allegedly replied, “No you won’t; you’re too much of a p---y to do that.” At that point, the defenseman called over referee Joe Monette and told him what Sim had said. Monette then conferred with one of the linesmen, who confirmed what Sim had said and then gave Sim a game misconduct for unsportsmanlike conduct. The next day, the OHL suspended Sim five games for contravening the league’s diversity, maltreatment and bullying policy and its pre-game warm-up policy.

There was no hearing held before the suspension, and Sim, whose father, Jon, played in both the OHL and NHL and is an amateur scout with the St. Louis Blues, has no avenue of appeal. The league does not hear appeals for suspensions under 10 games, and the Ontario Hockey Federation, which is the Ontario branch of Hockey Canada, does not hear appeals for suspensions of fewer than seven games. The CHL, the umbrella organization that includes the OHL, QMJHL and WHL, deals only with disputes among the member leagues. Maloney appealed to Hockey Canada and the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), both of whom informed him they have no jurisdiction over the matter.

At the heart of the matter is Sim’s alleged use of the vulgar word. One OHL executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity was surprised to hear of the suspension and the precedent it could create. 

“If they’re going to suspend a guy for that,” he said, “they’d better get ready give out 20 suspensions a game.”

There is no doubt that junior hockey, and the game in general, is facing a time of reckoning when it comes to masculine toxicity and the problems it can create. But when someone gets suspended five games for using that word, has the pendulum swung too far? It's tough to say.

Sim and his agent contended that Sim used the word to convey the idea that the Spirit defenseman was a soft player. While the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word in question as a female body part and a female sex partner under ‘vulgar,’ it is also defined as “a weak or cowardly man or boy” under slang, although Dictionary.com also labels that definition as ‘disparaging and offensive.’

Dr. Sheila Embleton is a distinguished research professor in linguistics at York University with a specialization in dialect and slang. She acknowledged that while the slang term of the word was derived from a woman’s body part, context is important. 

“It seems a bit excessive,” Embleton said of the punishment. “The link is that it came to mean ‘a weak or cowardly man’ because of the link to the female meaning. But you can’t pin the whole history and etymology of one word on one guy. Is it his fault that western civilization is a mess?”

That said, in 2022-23, Hockey Canada saw an increase in reports as it continues to examine all instances of maltreatment, which includes bullying and discrimination. The number of calls assessed by officials under Hockey Canada's rule 11.4 for discrimination jumped to 913 from 512 the season before, although that doesn't include data from the CHL. In those cases, the minimum suspension is five games as Hockey Canada and its members look to eliminate discrimination and other forms of maltreatment with a "zero-tolerance policy." 

Another matter that arose during Sim's suspension was how it was handled. Whatever was allegedly said to Sim was not included in the report the officials filed with the league after the game. There was some optimism among members of Sim’s camp that the decision might be revisited and the suspension reduced, but Maloney said that was squashed when Knights assistant-GM Rob Simpson clarified the situation in a story in the London Free Press. The Knights and Sim were concerned that people would think Sim used a homophobic or racial slur, and they wanted to make it clear that he didn’t do that.

In a text exchange with Branch last Monday, Maloney asked Branch about a meeting he had with Jon Sim and asked whether his office would revisit the length of the suspension. 

“I as well felt Jon and I had a good discussion yesterday,” Branch texted back, according to Maloney. “I was somewhat surprised that the word was released to the media. Unfortunately, the league is not in a position to consider any adjustment given this.” (Italics added.)

Maloney would like to see his player back on the ice but said the bigger issue is the unfettered power the commissioner of the OHL has. 

“This is unfair,” Maloney said. “They can literally suspend a player for anything they want and if it’s under 10, there’s no appeals committee and nobody will touch it. Are you telling me nobody will touch this? In this situation, there are no clear rules, there was nothing put in writing to the player, there was no hearing, no procedural fairness. There’s a major accountability issue here, and I want to shine light on that.”

Sim, who was drafted by the St. Louis Blues in 2022, sat out Game 6 of the Western Conference final, which London won to earn a berth in the league final against the Oshawa Generals. Sim is due to sit out the first four games of the OHL final series. But it doesn’t look as though the Knights will need him. In what is shaping up to be the most lopsided final in league history, the Knights lead the best-of-seven series 2-0 and have outscored the Generals 17-2 going into Game 3 Monday night in Oshawa. 

Repeated attempts were made to speak to Branch through email, text, and phone calls, and after initially agreeing to be interviewed, there was no response.