Linus Ullmark, seen here in action for the Senators last month before taking a personal leave of absence, has seen his name run through the online rumour mill.Sue Ogrocki/The Associated Press
On Saturday night, the Ottawa Senators lost a close one to the Florida Panthers. This is new for them. The ‘close one’ part, I mean, not the losing.
This was meant to be the year the Senators went from comers to arrivers, though things are headed in the other direction. But good news – they’ve pinpointed the source of the problem. It’s you.
Ottawa really turned into the ditch just after the Christmas break. That’s when it was announced that the team’s starting goaltender, Linus Ullmark, was taking a leave for personal reasons.
As is standard, no reasons were given, and a boilerplate statement about respect and support was released.
This kind of thing works about as well in their workplace as it would in yours. People want to know because they’re concerned. That and morbid curiosity.
About a week in, a rumour about the actual reason for Ullmark’s absence started online. As a matter of law, it can’t be repeated here. But if you haven’t heard it already, I can guess where your next stop will be.
The rumour metastasized online over the course of a couple of days, from something someone heard to something that was a confirmed fact (minus the confirmation).
How many people were being convinced? Not many, surely. Also, why would anyone care what a bunch of deep thinkers on Reddit are saying? If that’s enough to drive you to distraction, pro sports may not be the job for you.
A great team wouldn’t care, and absolutely wouldn’t deign to respond. You think Derek Jeter went around New York in the early Aughties screaming, ‘There are no gift baskets’?
But Ottawa cares. A lot.
Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk had a profane response to the recent online discourse around his team.Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters
Team general manager Steve Staois released a seething official statement. It began: “Our organization was extremely disappointed to read the completely fabricated and false stories that are spreading around social media about our hockey club.”
Fabricated and false? Then I suppose it can’t be true. Legally.
According to Staois, the rumours were spread by “the lowest form of trolls and sick people who scour the internet.”
When I hear a wild story and a person involved in it reacts by turning purple and yelling like they are not in full control of themselves, I tend to be less rather than more convinced.
Up until that point, this was one of a bajillion unsourced, unlikely stories on the internet about a guy who, let’s face it, most people couldn’t ID if he was standing in their kitchen wearing a jersey with his name on the back of it. The best course of action is to wait for someone to post a 20,000-word essay proving that the Earth is hollow, and let the herd move on.
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But Ottawa had to turn it into a real news story. Then they had to keep reinforcing how seriously it ought to be taken.
On Saturday, Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk went on a profane rant about the situation. All the bleeping was quoted extensively.
But it was as he wound down that Tkachuk began to approach something like wisdom: “That’s just how it is in our society and in life now, that people can just say whatever they want, no repercussions, and don’t really realize who it affects.”
Right and wrong. People can say whatever they want, but they absolutely realize who it affects, and you just proved it’s working.
Some online arsonist invents a story. A few other fire starters pick it up. And within the space of a few days, they are in direct communication with the GM and the best player on the professional sports team they spend far too much time thinking about it.
If you were the sort of person who did such things, what else you call this but a major victory? And wouldn’t the first thing you thought be, ‘I can’t wait to try that again.’
Meanwhile, many people who wouldn’t have heard about it have, and some of them will think that where there’s smoke, fire must follow. The more Ottawa loses, the more this impression is reinforced.
In the old days, players’ relationships with their fans were mediated through the press. That didn’t stop rumours from starting, but it provided them with less purchase. Because if you heard it in a bar, but didn’t see it in the paper, you knew not to trust it.
Now that line of communication is electronic and direct. Depending on the player, content about their lives – where they are, who they’re with, what they’re doing – flows constantly.
When you share this much, then stop sharing all of a sudden, alternate sources of information fill the gap. You’ve made these people part of (insert team name here) Nation. They’re used to regular updates. Some of them won’t accept it when you cut them off.
A subset of those people will leverage the vacuum for mischief, knowing that the club’s direct line to the fans also runs in the other direction. The team is reading this nonsense, and treating it like something reported in the Financial Times.
If you run a sports team and don’t want this cycle repeating, ask yourself a few questions.
Would you like your players’ private lives to be private? Then let them decide which one they’d prefer. For public figures today, there is no such thing as mostly private, or private when we would like it to be. It’s all or nothing.
Assuming they opt for non-private, shouldn’t people be nicer to them? They absolutely should. I hope the Senators will let us know when they solve this issue of humans being cruel to each other. Maybe yelling about it some more will work.
Do you want your employees’ problems, real or imagined, turned into news fodder? No? Then don’t write press releases about them.