Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports
As they say: the numbers don’t lie.
According to a study conducted by the website Onlinecasino.ca, Washington’s Tom Wilson has been named the most hated NHL player on social media, with 47.9% of his total 19,020 impressions skewing negative. This news, which isn’t exactly sourced from the Elias Sports Bureau, should come to the surprise of precisely no one.
Some might be surprised that the numbers aren’t skewed even more in Wilson’s direction.
Yes, the man has his staunch defenders littered amongst the Capitals faithful that will outright threaten your family along with everyone you hold dear if you so much as whisper a displeasing word in their King Goon’s direction. But Capitals fans only make up so much of Hockey Twitter’s total population. And Wilson, thanks to his routine acts of violence that degrade the very spirit of the game he plays, elicits nothing but abject hatred from pretty much every other corner of the internet.
With less than 50% of his total impressions trending in a negative direction, one can only wonder where the rest of this Wilson praise is coming from.
Perhaps even more surprising is the 15.3% of Wilson’s impressions that can be categorized as “neutral”, giving him the second-highest ranking in that category behind Patrick Kane.
Who on earth is neutral about Tom Wilson? This is the most polarizing player in the league we’re talking about here, someone who elicits either die-hard defenders or mouth-frothing haters with no in-between. Show me a person who can look at Wilson inflict lasting brain damage on an opponent for no reason during a mundane Tuesday night matchup and respond with a resounding “meh”. You can’t. Because that person does not exist.
It’s right around this time that one might begin to question the legitimacy of this study.
When Artemi Panarin, William Nylander and TJ Oshie are supposedly more hated on social media than the likes of Brad Marchand, there must be a bug in the data somewhere. Sure, every uncle in Ontario might loathe Nylander just because he’s a beautiful, golden-haired angel with hands of silk, but Marchand is a different breed. Want proof? The YouTube video titled “3 Minutes of Brad Marchand Getting Destroyed” has over 300,000 views.
And that’s only one of countless other compilations exclusively showcasing the Bruins agitator receiving a semblance of the physical harm he dolls out to others.
That’s a different level of hatred. One only Marchand and Wilson can claim to garner.
Regardless of the methods, the one thing rings true. The source might be questionable, but Hockey Twitter hates Tom Wilson.
