Do You Need A Program?

Fans of Canada West men's hockey are no strangers to the man pictured to the left. That's UBC Thunderbirds netminder Rylan Toth, and he's made quite a name for himself while stopping pucks for UBC. Of course, he's had a few EBUG stints with the Vancouver Canucks, but there's no doubt that his resumé of work in Canada West has set him apart from the rest of the goaltenders in the conference. That point in writing all that is that he's fairly well-known after helping UBC upset the Alberta Golden Bears en route to a berth at the Nationals tournament in 2020, and following that up with an incredible season this year that resulted in UBC's second-straight appearance in Halifax.

Tonight's article isn't so much about Rylan Toth as a player, but entirely about his name and, specifically, one organization who should know his name very well yet has disrespected Toth by calling him the wrong name on two separate occasions on two completely different days. If there's one group who should know Rylan Toth's name, you'd think it would be U SPORTS considering Toth's career. Instead, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I don't know who is running the U SPORTS Hockey Twitter account nor the U SPORTS account, but I assume it's the same person since social media isn't something where the university sports organization would invest a ton of money. Whoever is behind the account needs to pay closer attention to details, though, because the UBC Thunderbirds have never had a "Ryan Toth" play for them.

If you're paying close attention to that screenshot, you can see the graphic that U SPORTS attached to the tweet has Rylan's name spelled right, so it's not like they don't know what his name is. His name was written in both the English blurb and the French blurb, so this seems like it's more than just some sort of misspelling or autocorrect mistake.

They seemed to know who Rylan Toth was just 20 minutes later when they announced the U SPORTS All-Canadians, though. Whoever is behind the account is only human, I suppose, and maybe the first tweet really was an honest mistake.

I willing to let it slide since they clearly made sure they gave Rylan his proper name just 20 minutes after the first tweet with the wrong name. With Toth being credited properly and the awards handed out, it was time for hockey and I was looking forward to tonight's game against UQTR where UBC would get a chance to show Canada what kind of damage the Thunderbirds could do.

Everything was rolling along between UBC and UQTR tonight, and they actually went into overtime tied at 1-1. With the quick break between the third period and the overtime period, I logged into Twitter to check the game information and, lo and behold, look what I found from the U SPORTS Hockey account.

Look, whoever is running this account had to write Rylan's name twice in the tweet once again. This is more than just a spelling mistake at this point, and it's hard to believe that U SPORTS can't get the name of very person they named as the best goaltender in men's university hockey correct in four of five opportunities where they wrote the name. That's just disrespectful at that point.

I'm annoyed when I mispronounce a name on hockey broadcasts. I'm bothered when I hear others mispronounce names as well. However, I'm baffled in seeing the very organization that is supposed to know and promote these athletes completely disrespect a player like Rylan Toth whose name is not only published all over their own website and publications such as the programs handed out at the tournament, but whose name was engraved on the very trophy they gave him for his excellence this season. Yet here we are tweeting about Ryan Toth.

If the person running the U SPORTS social media accounts was unsure of anyone's name, perhaps it would have been wise to grab a program and verify the spelling. Or check their website. Or check the Canada West website. Or the UBC website. Or this site. Or Google. All of those options would have pointed to Rylan Toth rather than Ryan Toth, and we could have just chalked up the first tweet as a mistake.

Now? It's just negligent and disrespectful. And it's not a funny April Fool's Day prank in any way.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!