dekedangle_rpfanon | #29 – Lay, Lie, or Laine?

This is the twenty-ninth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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the beef with the pens twitter and pensinsidescoop i feel is a valid one. they're the official team representatives and they don't give murray nearly the credit when he performed so well in the season and they pile on the compliments for fleury.

they're the official twitters, they need to have some semblance of fairness and it's incredibly lacking wrt to murray imo

I get that when it comes to the regular season and he was playing, that's very shady of them. I just don't get her overreaction when it's the playoffs and Murray isn't playing so obviously they'll congratulate the guy who did and she'll harp on and on about it.

DA

The only thing I've seen in the playoffs was that "last 30 out of 31 saves" tweet, which was really funny. That was comical stat manipulation.

i think it's more annoyance on her part that they never treat murray the same as fleury wrt to praise, which i get that fleury has been around way longer but it is grating at the same time to see such vast difference in their treatment

Huh. As a Pens fan who loves both goalies, I've never noticed that Pens twitter treats either of them better or worse. I follow every game, and the twitter team seems to recognize good games/performances whoever's in net. That said, MAF and Murray are very different goalies with very different personalities. MAF is a fan favorite, and they've def. been hyping that since Murray has been injured.

But that feels like good PR to me rather than some deliberate slight. Fleury is loved by the fans. He's playing well. It's his last season on the team, and he didn't play last post-season. It's a feel-good story, and he's an easy player to be excited about because he's so obviously into it and having a ball.

Murray is a different player. He isn't as fun. He doesn't feed off the crowd in the same way. Doesn't interact with the beat reporters or the Pens media the same way. He doesn't have the same relationship with them. I don't know if that = bias, or if it just results in different coverage, because Pens twitter isn't just reporting what's going on in a game, but interacting with fans.

I dunno, I feel like it's kind of similar to the Kris Letang thing and him being "underrated." He doesn't get as much coverage or interviews. He's not as
personable. He is in fact a little prickly, and I think it makes a difference in how he comes across via the media.

DA

They literally had to be shamed into acknowledging Murray's shutout. Before that, the only thing they tweeted about was Murray saying what a nice guy Fleury is. If you can't see the bias in that, I don't know. I suspect you have a bias of your own you haven't fully realized.

So do you have a link to this shaming, or are we just taking your word for it?

I found it just for you! https://twitter.com/thatandysmith/status/840805077803757568

A few others said stuff too, including Ryan Wilson, C. Tompkins, ck (@404ResponseCode) and others.

Immediately after Andy's tweet, the Pens tweeted something out about Murray's shutout, but before that it was all Fleury even though he didn't play.

I'll freely admit to liking Fleury a lot, and likewise, I haven't kept careful track of tweets-per-goalie-appearance, so this is unscientific, but come on, during games, they're never short on "What a stop by Murray!"s or "He has been a wall back there!"s. I'll buy that there's a different vibe to the coverage, maybe, but there's a different vibe to the goalies, too.

DA

Not a Pens person, but I've noticed weird gaps in coverage, photos, etc. by my team's social media accounts, and it's almost entirely based on the medium and what fans on each medium want. The players I'm into have no social media presence, even ones run by an agent/PR person, so they almost never appear on the Instagram account. Players who have active accounts there will get promoted. The stars, social media presence or not, get promoted on Twitter. Facebook is the same as Twitter.

SA

Matt Murray is actually pretty active on instagram and twitter. He has a dog, a very large dog, and thankfully he's sharing how big it's getting with the internet :) He was also pretty vocal about Pride night. And the only reason I know any of this is because Pens twitter feeds it to me. Because they like both their goalies just fine and cover them when they do things.

I also wonder if there's team-directed message/narrative shaping that comes across as being "in favor" of one guy and "against" another that has everything to do with marketing and business and nothing to do with the players at all (minus their likeness).

There was an interview with the LAKings twitter person once and the interviewer asked about the Voynov situation and what could be tweeted about and it spiraled into a discussion about the larger narrative and how all the tweeting seems like fun and games but really most teams use all their social media to craft the larger message that they're using to market the team.

If that's the case (and I think it's a really good point), then it makes sense for someone to be concerned with the marketing message from a team if it runs counter to the logical hockey direction. Like if Murray is the future, why is he being marketed differently than Fleury (if he is)?

Their media guide is hilarious in light of this conversation, by the way: https://twitter.com/pensprlady/status/856640965272117248 Compare the Fleury spread to the Murray page.

Nice guide!

Related to nothing. Hi Justin Schultz. I love you.

He's pretty great. :') And even better in this dire time of No Kris Letang.

Did you see this cheeky article about how Schultz has been "advising" his Oilers ex-teammates on being in the playoffs?
http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/12211893-74/penguins-notebook-schultz-in-advisory-position-with-old-team

ayrt

I wonder if we should read more into how hurt Murray is based on the media guide. It seems not worth a graphic designers time to build the more detailed graphics (that they also cannibalize for use on social media) for someone who isn't going to play in the series.

I also wonder. Since I'm wondering about these things. If there's been a really concerted effort this year to NOT slight MAF in the marketing and it's worked somewhat in the opposite direction and unintentially turned some of the fan base against him because of the perception that he's getting preferential treatment.

This idea of preferential treatment exists solely in the fevered brains of a handful of people here and on Twitter, IMO. I definitely do not think it's a widespread perception in the larger Pens fanbase.

+1

I follow Pens twitter handles and love both goalies, and have never seen any favoritism, just a lot of appreciation and love for both. This sounds a bit tinhatty to be honest.

Naw, there's always been a sizeable contingent of MAF haters who are going to be enraged by any positive mention. I'm not a Pens fan and I rarely have any reason to talk about them. But if I say something the slightest bit positive — like at the beginning of the year saying that I could understand why, especially after his experience in Carolina with Cam Ward, the GM might want to keep MAF for the season, I get accused of being a MAF stan blinded by love for him.

na

If there's been a really concerted effort this year to NOT slight MAF in the marketing and it's worked somewhat in the opposite direction and unintentially turned some of the fan base against him because of the perception that he's getting preferential treatment.

As someone pretty neutral between MAF and Murray (from a personal/emotional standpoint, from a hockey standpoint Murray is the obvious choice), I always thought it was obvious that the subtext of a lot of the team's PR push for Fleury (especially twitter stuff like tweeting "you can support both goalies" whenever MAF is playing) is simply in reaction to the massive quantity of stuff they see on social media from people saying terrible things about Fleury. Most of us have a pretty circumscribed set of fans we're exposed to, even including fans who we might dislike or disagree with. But team social media people have a total different perspective of what online fandom looks like when they tweet that Fleury's let in a soft goal and get immediately bombarded with a flood of nonsensically nasty messages.

da

That's a really good point. It's easy to forget in RPF fandom, which has been fairly pro-Fleury all along, but a lot of people consider him a laughingstock (unjustly, IMO, considering his performance the last few years - he may not be elite, but he's perfectly serviceable).

DA

That's a great point. Their perspective is totally different from ours.

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Deke Dangle RPF Anon

An Ice Hockey RPF Anon Meme

#29 – Lay, Lie, or Laine?

#29 – Lay, Lie, or Laine?

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