Bernier’s wife causes stir by posting baby photo, making cryptic comment on Instagram

Photo Credit: Aaron Dorster/USA TODAY Sports

Hockey’s traditional silly season is just beginning, although in Toronto it seems like hockey’s silly season never ends.

On Wednesday morning Toronto-area Twitter feeds lit up with talk about what Maple Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier’s wife, Martine Forget of Hockey Wives fame, had ‘leaked’ on Instagram when she gave a cryptic response to someone asking why her newborn baby wasn’t wearing a Leafs bib or onesie of some sort. 

Yes, this is the stupidest and most typical Maple Leafs non-story since that time Steven Stamkos favorited a tweet and launched a trillion blog posts (and an official comment from his current team).

Here’s the tweet/Instagram comment in question so you can Snapchat it your friends who will periscope their reaction:

And now this is a thing and will be on the tip of the tongue in Toronto today. And yeah, It’s an odd comment. Odder still, it seems as if they may have actually taken markers to the Maple Leafs logo that should be on the shoulders:

Yes we just crossed a line into treating a baby photo like it’s the damn Zapruder film. No, we are not proud of ourselves. 

The obvious angle to explore here is that Bernier is a restricted free agent who is just a year removed from unrestricted free agency and would surely like to get paid this summer. The problem is that he’s the old Maple Leafs regimes ‘future starter’, and the incoming regime may not care to pay a legitimately above average starter like a massive star. 

There were even whispers ahead of the trade deadline that he could be moved, and no one would be unduly surprised if the club kicked the tires on the goalie market at the draft floor.

Of course there are other lighter hearted explanations, like this one proposed by our old pal Ace:

Or maybe Martine, who hails from a suburb of Montreal, wants to make sure she raises a Habs fan. 

Or maybe, as Maple Leafs Hot Stove’s Alec Brownscombe half jokingly suggests, the comment is in reference to Jonathan and Martine’s son appearing on an episode of hockey wives (and the logos are blurred because they can’t air them)…

Whatever. Who cares. It’s a baby photo and a cryptic comment. 

We sort of expected Bernier to either get traded or have a tough negotiation with the Maple Leafs this summer anyway, and this doesn’t really change that. It’s just fuel for the ever smouldering crater of hockey news that we fondly call the big smoke.