NHL To Slap Players Who Shoot-Off Mouths With New Social Media Policy

Phoenix Coyote left winger Paul Bissonnette represents a new generation of professional athlete, who can keep fans connected with irreverent commentary. He’s not yet a very good NHL player, playing in only 48 games in the 2010-11 NHL season, and scoring exactly one goal. But the 26-year-old can really tweet. As of Sunday September 18, he had 133,783 followers @BizNasty2point0, and he is in near-constant dialog with his fans, answering questions in a matter of minutes.

Now, Bissonnette is going to have to be a little more careful about what he says. The NHL released this week an in-depth social media policy that tells players what they can and cannot do on such channels as Twitter and Facebook, and some of Bissonnette’s most recent posts would violate league policy if they came on a game day.

Consider Sunday:

1. Bissonnette received a Tweet from fan Michael Kinky that said “just read about ur hand/wrist injury, how bad does that still affect daily life?”
2. Bissonnette responded seven minutes later “that injury was bad. A guy stepped on my wrist with his skate. Cut tendons, nerve and artery. I lost feeling in my thumb.”
3. Six minutes later, Bissonnette tweeted “folks that wrist injury was 3 years ago.”

Under the NHL’s new policy, that three-tweet exchange would probably be a game-day violation. Even though Bissonnette moved quickly to clarify to fans that he was commenting on an old injury, his first response was discussing an injury that may or may not be current. And on a game-day, that kind of information could be used in bookmaking or other activities the league wants to discourage, and Bissonnette might have been fined.

Luckily for Bissonnette, it wasn’t a game day and he’s a fringe player who can hardly break into the line-up, let alone move a Las Vegas line. Since his transgression comes only days after the NHL introduced its social media policy, it instead illustrates how significant these new policies could become in coming years.

Ice hockey was one of the last professional sports leagues to institute a policy, so it comes at a time when ties between social media and sports is tighter than ever. There was more media exposure placed on the NHL’s agreement than any other than came before it, and the policy gives mobile sports fans real insight into the limits placed on players in all professional sports leagues.

Yahoo journalist Greg Wyshynski had by far the best take on the NHL’s agreement with his “inside the NHL’s new social media policy for players.”

Wyshynski wrote:

“The good news is that the new policy doesn’t completely muzzle them. The bad news is that it’s been made crystal clear that Big Brother’s got an eye on Twitter and Facebook, watching for NHL players that share a little too much with their fans.”

Here’s what mobile sports fans should know about league agreements:

–Players are typically blocked out on game days. In the case of the NHL, players can’t tweet beginning at 11 am through postgame media obligations. Fines can result.

–Players typically run their tweets through the public relations offices of their respective teams so don’t expect much more than personality to come across your smart phone.