@ The Trade Deadline, Facts Don’t Get In The Way
esd714 | Feb 28, 2011 | Comments 0
And so the NHL Trade Deadline, 2011 edition has come and gone. There’s tons of great coverage on the deals that were, the deals that weren’t and the deals that shouldn’t have been throughout the HI site. By all counts and measures, the block-buster deals of this trading season happened weeks ago, so today’s countdown to 3 ET was as BD Gallof the Managing Editor of this site said several times throughout the afternoon on Twitter, it was basically a boring day.
But there were some humorous moments, fueled in large part by fans searching for news, fake Twitter accounts and the general rabid speculation trade deadline day carries that at one time had Zenon Konopka a trending topic, Joffrey Lupol traded to the Islanders (even a team website reporting it) and more experts and pundits than can be counted pounding the table their laptops sit on trying to show off their genius.
The Konopka rumor came early in the morning, and if Twitter can be believed prompted a call from the Islanders fourth line center to TSN telling them he was still part of the Islanders. There was confirmation it was for a fourth. Confirmation that Islanders’ GM Garth Snow was asking for a second. Confirmation that the deal was done, but it wasn’t.
Problem was none of the confirmation came from what you would call the alphabet soup of reliable sources: TSN, CBC, NBC, ESPN, NHL, NHLPA.
Then came a Toronto Maple Leaf blogger playing a joke on Joffrey Lupul on Twitter. Down Goes Brown asked his followers to help him play a joke on Lupol, and to basically tweet at 1250 (et) that Lupul was Long Island bound.
Well it worked-for hours there were tweets about Lupul going to the Isles. Even the Flyers website picked up the “confirmed” story:
And for his part, Lupul was a good sport on Twitter (and taking a swipe at the wall-to-wall coverage of no trades):
As a hockey fan, it was a fun day to watch. As an advocate of using social media as a front line way to reach masses quickly with information they seek-the holes were exposed. Its a buyer beware world for sure, at the same time though its important for those who are in the dissemination business to be out front as well.
