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Capitals’ Twitter account follows, then unfollows Carolina Hurricanes

By Ian Oland

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July 19, 2020 12:30 am

The Carolina Hurricanes and Washington Capitals’ social media beef is getting more personal… or manufactured. I haven’t really decided yet.

Saturday night, the Capitals, possibly admiring the Carolina Hurricanes’ team photo which featured every player in masks, followed the Canes on Twitter.

The two teams have picked on each other in the past so the Hurricanes’ posted a screenshot of the follow in their mentions with a spicy retort.

98 minutes later, the Hurricanes revealed that the Capitals unfollowed them.

The Capitals did not respond (as of publishing).

This left me wondering. Was the Capitals’ initial follow an accident or was the unfollow a clapback?

Judging from the Capitals’ follow list, somebody probably had some clumsy thumbs. Unlike the Canes who are friends with everybody, the Capitals do not follow any other NHL organizations on Twitter. The WSH Twitter account follows former and current players, other MSE teams, their staff, and some credentialed media. So the follow/unfollow was not something to take personally. But yet here we are.

This tactic is not new for the Hurricanes who have been trying to get attention and instigate Twitter fights with the Capitals over the last year. Here’s a summary of some of the back and forth, which also includes the Capitals’ TV rights holder, NBC Sports Washington.

The Hurricanes also celebrated World Kindness Day in November 2019 by saying nice things about every NHL franchise except the Capitals.

So why are the Canes doing this? My guess is that they are desperate for a big rival.

Rivalries that have passion and conflict deliver more ratings and interest (money!). See the Capitals and the Penguins.

And I’ll admit it. The Canes wanting Washington as their rival makes a lot of sense. The Caps are in some ways a measuring stick for Carolina’s franchise currently. The Caps have a long consecutive sellout streak, they are the class of the Metropolitan Division winning it five straight years, and they raised the Stanley Cup most recently in 2018. The Caps have nearly 400k more followers on Twitter. The two teams are also located close to each other geographically so there could be some overlap to pick up new hockey fans.

With both teams playing in the same division and matching up a bunch of times against each other in the regular season, the Canes probably figure this could be a rivalry that grows with some investment and some figurative eye pokes on social media. The two teams’ back-and-forth, first-round series last year was thrilling and went seven games. The series featured on-ice run-ins between Alex Ovechkin and Andrei Svechnikov (and Andrei’s brother) as well as TJ Oshie and Warren Foegele. That series also inspired a beef between Tom Wilson and head coach Rod Brind’Amour where Wilson tried to go on the Canes’ bench.

The Canes really, really want the Capitals and their fanbase to hate them. Like, really bad. But it does not appear to be working.

Anyways, to close this article out, I’ll turn to RMNB’s brilliant Rachel Cohen and Elyse Bailey for the final word.

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