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.