Jakub Voracek Adds Spice To Otherwise Dull Presser By Calling Reporter A “Weasel”

Head down to the basement and crack open the freezer, because we have some hockey beef. In a presser after Friday's 5-2 win over the Penguins, Flyers forward Jakub Voracek got strangely aggressive toward columnist Mike Sielski of the Philadelphia Inquirer, seemingly out of nowhere. It gradually became clear that what bothered Voracek wasn't the question, but the person asking it.

After Sielski asked about the Flyers' 2-0-0 season start, Voracek snapped at him. "Does it matter what I say, Mike? You’re gonna write fucking shit every time so it doesn’t matter what you say," he said.

"I wasn't even gonna answer your question because you are such a weasel, it's not even funny," Voracek added after his actual answer. His teammate Travis Konecny, who sat beside him because he had scored a hat trick in the game, tried to keep a straight face.

So why was Voracek so pissed off at Sielski? According to Sielski, who did an interview with Crossing Broad, the grudge seems to have stemmed from a column he wrote in October 2019, when the Flyers were slow to begin the season.

In the original article, Sielski wrote that Voracek and teammate James van Riemsdyk appeared to be laughing while head coach Alain Vigneault was talking about his veteran players in the locker room. A team flack took exception—or perhaps more accurately, someone told a team flack to take exception—to the insinuation that the two players were laughing at Vigneault, and not something unrelated. Sielski said he edited the column to clarify the language, but Voracek stewed over it all the way up until that presser. In a tweet later that night, he confirmed as much:

Anyway, great job with the hat trick, Travis!

H/t to David