Joel Ward Talks Racist

Joel Ward speaks with USA Today about the racial garbage on Twitter after Game 7: "It doesn't faze me at all. We won, and we are moving on. … People are going to say what they want to say." He also said Jeff Halpern showed him the Tweets on the team plane and apologized that Ward had to see them.

I think I’m about to write 17 consecutive blog posts that say the same thing, but here’s the basic message: the mood of Washington sports fans on the Internet late Wednesday night was as giddily happy as I can ever remember.
Within 24 hours, sports fans will have seen see the Caps vanquish both the Stanley Cup champs and their game 7 demons, the Nats improve to an utterly absurd 14-4, and the Redskins draft the most likable Heisman Trophy-winning franchise quarterback in recent memory.

"There is no lying about it. …I'm definitely the one black guy in a room with 20 white guys," Joel Ward said. "There are definitely some cultural differences, such as taste in music, but I've neard heard anything derogatory."
He says he has no concern about his safety moving forward in the playoffs.
"I'm pretty laid-back and I get along with a lot of people," Ward said. "I don't fear anything like that, and I have a good group of guys to protect me."
Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, in a blog post about the situation, called people making the comments "unforgivable."
“I hope they are now publicly identified and pay a huge price for their beliefs," Leonsis wrote. "There should be zero tolerance for this kind of hate mongering. Their messages should now stay glued into the algorithms to place a forever warning and a mark upon these people and their actions. They shouldn’t be able to escape their keystrokes.”
The Bruins also said they were "very disappointed" in the comments.
“These classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization,” read a team release.
Several of the tweets were aggregated at Chirpstory.com; by Thursday afternoon, many of the offending accounts had been deleted.
The comments started shortly after the 31-year-old Ward, in his first season with the Capitals, backhanded Mike Knuble's rebound past Thomas, giving Washington a 3-2 win.
"When I saw the puck there, I just took a whack at it," Ward said after the game. "It was a sense of relief, a great accomplishment."