Seravalli comes in hot with an all-time tone deaf season prediction

[majormajor]

The in heaven part was an edit he later added. It started as "With a little help from Guadreau...."

Yeah but I read it the same way the first time. Seemed obvious to me.

 

[NailsHoglander]

The free AI editor thought it looked good.

 

[Canucks LB]

Does this idiot have his own thread tag yet?

Rather have Dhaliwal, who is a great guy and accurate a ton.

 

[Jared Dunn]

What an elite level of idiocy. What could he possibly have expected the response to that being?

 

[Stealth JD]

People get offended easily. That’s a nothing-burger of a comment.

Now had he said, “with a little help from THE LOSS OF Gaudreau….”, that would’ve been pretty horrible.

It’s pretty clear he meant in a guardian-angel kinda way.

 

[nowhereman]

Not something worth getting too bent out of shape over. Dumb and a careless choice of words? Yes. But not malicious.

And I say this as a Canucks fan, a fanbase big silver threw shade at for most of the post/off-season.

 

[EpochLink]

Rather have Dhaliwal, who is a great guy and accurate a ton.

I’d rather have Dhaliwal and his Crown Royal handle than Seravelli

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

Not something worth getting too bent out of shape over. Dumb and a careless choice of words? Yes. But not malicious.

And I say this as a Canucks fan, a fanbase big silver threw shade at for most of the post/off-season.

I don't think anyone is saying he's evil or bad, just a huge moron.

 

[HanSolo]

Can't think of a better representative of the industry to serve as the president of the Professional Hockey Writer's Association.

I mean, I can but they're rare gems and not indicative of the industry.

 

[Breakers]

Wait wait wait wait

He wrote this after the death, and thought it was somewhat appropriate

Pfffffftttt this is brutal

 

[Bleedred]

Couldn’t he have just said “draft lottery” without bringing Gaudreau’s name into it?

I could see if he got on a podcast or radio show and someone asked him “well, why do you think that?”, but there was no need to mention that in a short post like that.

 

[Jee]

 

[MXD]

Wait wait wait wait

He wrote this after the death, and thought it was somewhat appropriate

Pfffffftttt this is brutal

If he had said that on a podcast or something, that would've been excusable. Now he's just failing at his job.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I don't think anyone is saying he's evil or bad, just a huge moron.

Exactly.

I'm not calling for his head but the fact that this thought went from his brain, through his fingers, (presumably) through some sort of editor and out into the world in the first place is just a really dumb thing to have happened.

And then it was compounded by multiple corrections and edits.

So this went through what ... three or four checkpoints where it could've been stopped and it just seems to have blown through all of them.

He can wear a dunce cap for the day.

 

[wetcoast]

Sports journalists are f***ing idiots, and the hockey media tends to be the cream that rises to the top of that heap.

Sports journalists is like military intelligence right?

I get that people hate him, he is a clown but shit happens.

The offseason is way too long and things like this fill it sadly.

 

[Bounces R Way]

Don't really see it as a big deal but pretty Seravalli typical to stick his foot in his mouth. Always been a loud mouthed idiot. Sports journalism has taken a dive in general quality the last 5-6 years.

 

[Phrasing]

F*ck you Frank.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

F*ck you Frank.

It is certainly fitting that Phrasing is chiming in!

 

[Crede777]

Seemed pretty clear to me at first. But good on him to take the high road and clarify / apologize.

 

[Memento]

In my opinion, this is a fireable offense. He had absolutely no reason to do this, no reason to go there, and he deserves to be fired after this. The editor who let it go to print ought to be fired as well.

 

[ranold26]

Midvale School for the Gifted, right there.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

It's a really stupid thing to say, but let's not pretend the Reddit/Twitter brigade is actually about writing any wrong. It's about the dopamine rush that comes with judging someone who did something bad.

People get off on the spectacle of public shame. It's part of the online culture now. It's gross. I am not suggesting that people shouldn't be held accountable for saying ignorant things, but there is a difference between someone being held accountable and a group of people amplifying an ignorant throw away line.

Another part of this is that he is generally unliked by the Reddit tier fan. Same with Pagnotta and a few other guys. If Friedman, Marek, or one of the more popular/likeable analysts wrote this or said it on a podcast - it would be equally as ignorant, but I'm not sure it gets the same backlash because you're going to get less upvotes trying to gang up on a popular guy like Friedman. The dopamine just doesn't rush as hard.

Ironically, nothing was actually gained by people amplifying this. All it did was draw attention to a stupid one line about Johnny's angel helping move lottery balls, and make it a lot more likely that anybody who actually knew the guy and is in a reasonable position to be upset would be see it and be upset by it.

Even his apology shows how strange our culture is. He couldn't even give a real apology because the mob needs blood. He had to use a line from the "my first Twitter controversy" template, "I promise to be better". I'm guessing he debated between whether to use the prayer sign emoji... He couldn't just say what happened, "I thought the image of Gaudreau helping them from heaven would be a nice narrative, but obviously that was a stupid thing to write. It's very obvious that I had no ill-intent, I just made an ignorant choice with my writing. Get off of Reddit."

The only way he is a villain is if he did this intentionally knowing the buzz it would cause. Has anyone checked if Go_Habs_Go31 is his sock puppet account?

In the words of Thomas Chabot, that's a tough bounce.

 

[robertmac43]

Yeah but I read it the same way the first time. Seemed obvious to me.

One of those things where i don't think he had any malice in his words but it came off poorly. He could have done better with the original wording.

Glad to see he has since apologized.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Can't think of a better representative of the industry to serve as the president of the Professional Hockey Writer's Association.

I mean, I can but they're rare gems and not indicative of the industry.

I mean, other Presidents in the past have been Larry Brooks and Mark Spector, so…

 

[Turin]

I think that's how it's supposed to read, but the way it's phrased, it could be misconstrued as his death being helpful to the team for a draft pick. It's still tone deaf regardless.

I'm not surprised when sports journalists are bad writers, so I just don't see the need to rake somebody over the coals just because they said something that could be interpreted in an insensitive way - even though they obviously didn't intend that. There's a certain kind of online person who will always take the least charitable reading of anything and they're frankly annoying as f*** because those people are never impressive in real life and make dumb mistakes all the time.