Carolina Hurricanes: Social Media and Its Impact This Season

The Carolina Hurricane’s Social Media presence has taken leaps and bounds and has pretty much been an additional unstoppable force this season for the Canes.

The new slogan and hashtag for the Carolina Hurricanes, Take Warning, was introduced this year. The NHL has definitely been warned as the Hurricanes showed their promise with their unexpectedly successful season. We take a look at how social media brought the fans and the team closer.

The Carolina Hurricanes garnered a lot of media attention this past season. For the first time in a decade, the Hurricanes found their way into the national spotlight by making the Eastern Conference Finals. A Cinderella story that turned out to be more a team that proved to be more. With many successful moves and a successful team, the fan base came storming back. Why was that?

The social media team for the Hurricanes can be thanked for some of this exposure. When Don Cherry called out the team for celebrating wins and calling the team a bunch of jerks, it didn’t just rally the team, it rallied the fan base.

As the season progressed, the wins kept coming. The Hurricanes were poised for the playoffs. The Hurricanes made t-shirts with the phrase “Bunch of Jerks” and hockey Twitter was all over it. Many people from different fan bases defending the Hurricanes in spite of Don Cherry and his stance on the Storm Surge celebrations.

The official Twitter page for the Carolina Hurricanes bio now stands at “That bunch of jerks with the amazing fans.” The bio changed over the course of the season to go against the anti-fun stance. “That bunch of jerks with the fun celebrations.”

Don Cherry was at the forefront calling out the Hurricanes attendance numbers, saying that the team doesn’t draw fans despite the antics. Even though the Hurricanes finished 28th in attendance as the play picked up from the team the fans kept coming and coming. And they absolutely showed that they can be some of the most rambunctious fans in the league.

The social media team kept pushing this narrative that hockey players should have the right to have fun. They should cater to the fans because the fans pay their hard-earned money to watch the team and if the fans find it entertaining, then what is the problem.

There aren’t any rules against this, and they weren’t doing it to disrespect the other team, but just simply as a thank you to the fans.

For example, the Hurricanes twitter posted a photo, that made its rounds more than a few times, of a newspaper from The Simpsons. Instead of “old man yells at cloud,” the newspaper read “hockey analyst yells at celly.”

A word commonly seen by the Hurricanes twitter page was “fun.” The Hurricanes proved to hockey fans all around that having fun can help lead to success. When something feels like a job and isn’t fun anymore, then people tend to lose interest. Everyone saw the fun that was going on at PNC Arena and wanted to be apart of it as well, which leads me to the next thing.

Don Cherry stood by his bunch of jerks claim and even called the fans that were showing up front runners. He said the fans were only showing up because they were winning. That happens not just in hockey, but in any sport.

When teams struggle to win, the team attendance tends to take a dive. The Hurricanes, before this season, hadn’t made the playoffs since 2009. It’s tough for people to want to spend money to watch a team struggle.

Social media was a huge boost for the Hurricanes in terms of how they were publicized this season. It was also a huge reason on why Justin Williams felt like the team’s relationship with the fans was more like family than just a team and its fans.

It’s true because with all the criticism, the fans, the team, and the social media team wanted to make it known that hockey should be fun. You should be able to enjoy a win with your teams and with your fans.

Fans of the team felt like the hockey media went against them and that’s why the fans got behind the bunch of jerks movement. The fans and the team had something to get behind and were motivated to prove people wrong. That hockey belongs in the state of North Carolina. The bunch of jerks put the league on notice and so did their fans.

Social media is a huge part in today’s society. The Carolina Hurricanes social media team took full advantage of that and helped get the Hurricanes team as much positive attention as they could garner.

Question for CC Readers: What was your favorite Hurricanes moment on social media?