WWYDW: Banning Fortnite / Video Games On The Road?

The history of hockey has seen it’s fair share of players who have had careers cut short or never even fully realized due to various destructive vices that have robbed them of the focus and strength needed to succeed at the NHL level. Drugs and alcohol, addiction to pain killers, Fortnite…

Wait, what?

After a bunch of scuttlebutt over the summer of how hockey teams were starting to worry that the video game Fortnite was taking over the lives of hockey players everywhere thanks to it’s strong, competitive gameplay with a sense of humor, cartoonish but not overly so graphics, and replay ability. We started getting whispers that a kid already drafted was the bane of his team’s existence due to Fortnite. And then the talk of junior teams in Canada removing all references to the game. Now we have the next logical step to deal with this menace…

The Vancouver Canucks – who clearly are focused *snicker* on winning *chuckle* on the ultimate prize of the Stanley Cup *ROFLing* – have taken the drastic measure of outright banning video games from team road trips.

Because nothing says “bonding with fellow teammates” quite like overpaying for the experience of sitting in a dark cavernous room for two hours, quietly watching a movie with a bunch of other strangers who leave their stupid ringers on their stupid cell phones on. Amirite?

The Canucks had been talking about doing this for a while…”

“Old school mentality” all right.

I’ve often joked that if you’re over the age of 50, chances are you just don’t “get” video games and their appeal and this whole thing sure sounds like a bunch of old guys getting together and clamping down on those darn kids and their fancy interactive electronic boxes.

But Horvat is 23 years old. Michael Del Zotto is 28 years old and this seems to be a couple of the players leading the charge to have video games taken off the road.

To be fair to Zotto and Horvat, their argument that it takes a player away from overall interaction with his team is a valid one and has merit. As much as video games are mostly enjoyed in multi-player online experiences (Fortnite Battle Royale is strictly an on-line mode played against other human players) and can be a shared social experience, it’s not like a group of five or six guys can all pile around a TV and play the same game. If you’re leaving team dinners early so you can get back to your room to get in a few more hours of gaming, that’s not exactly ideal.

Much like everything else in life, video games are enjoyed in moderation and this wouldn’t be an issue if it was a case of only one or two guys in the league who maybe opted to stay in a hotel room all night trying to earn loot boxes in Overwatch rather than go see the sights of a major NHL city. That it’s something an entire team had to talk about and agree to suggests that maybe there is an issue with some players who can’t pull themselves away from a controller.

But an outright road ban still seems like a bit of a gross overreaction if not something that would be a tad hard to enforce.

As guys going to check each others bags pre-flight? Is someone from the Canucks the designated room checker, patrolling hotel hallways and carefully listening for cries of “where we dropping?” The Canucks know you can play Fortnite on pretty much anything including iOS devices, right?

All of this brings us to this week’s WWYDW question…

I think we all know what the answer would be if it was up to noted video game player and Winnipeg jets sniper (both in video games and on the actual ice) Patrik Laine and hell, as this is being published this morning there is a chance a reporter is lining up to ask him what he thinks of the Canucks decision.

Let us know your thoughts on the great Fortnite debate of 2018 in the comments below or on either our Twitter feed or Facebook page!