Maple Leafs’ Teddy Blueger Shocked By Brutal Toronto Traffic On Game Days

Teddy Blueger has played in Pittsburgh and Vancouver. He has navigated arena parking lots, airport runs and the usual NHL calendar. None of it prepared him for the drive to Scotiabank Arena.

Asked Sunday for his welcome-to-Toronto moment, the Toronto Maple Leafs center did not reach for a goal, a hit or a first shift in blue and white. He reached for the clock.

“Welcome to Toronto? Probably taking almost an hour to get to the game rink,” Blueger said after the Maple Leafs’ optional skills session.

The admission landed with the people in Toronto who already know the Gardiner and the DVP. Blueger said the trip can be 20 or 25 minutes on a good day. Saturday was not a good day. An hour in traffic, on the way to a 3-2 loss to Ottawa, was the market introducing itself.

“I’d say [it] caught me off guard quite a bit,” he said.

He has started asking teammates how they handle it. The consensus is not comforting. The subway is more consistent. Everything else is a guess.

“Taking the subway seems to be a little more consistent,” Blueger said. “But other than that, it seems like it’s a little unpredictable, and you just kind of got to find your… Just constantly check your phone throughout the day, see what it’s looking like. If there’s a lot of red or not.”

That is the Toronto commute, reduced to a penalty killer refreshing Google Maps between meetings. Blueger called the adjustment to the city “quite drastic” compared with anywhere else he has played. Busier. More logistics. More on his mind before he even gets to the rink: when to leave, how long it will take, whether the red on the map is going to eat the window he built in.

“It definitely takes a little bit, and there’s more on your mind, and more kind of taken into account as you approach the game, and how you’re going to get there, the timing, or everything when you want to get down and all that,” he said. “So it’s been a bit of an adjustment for sure.”

The on-ice side has been cleaner. Blueger is on a fourth line with an identity, and he is part of a penalty kill that has not allowed a power-play goal in 10 chances. The city is the variable. He said a family skate later Sunday mattered for the same reason the commute does: the group is new, and the off-ice part is how it starts to feel like a team.

“You don’t all have to be best friends, but I think it’s important to just know each other, know each other’s backgrounds, respect each other as people,” Blueger said. “Over the course of the year, I think the closer you get, the more probably you’re willing to go the extra mile for your teammates.”

The extra mile, in this city, is sometimes literal. Blueger is three games in. He already knows the route is not the point. The point is leaving early enough that the route does not become the story.

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