The NHL's Los Angeles Kings paraded through downtown L.A. on Thursday to celebrate the franchise's first Stanley Cup championship. But the team didn't just win on the ice -- they whooped the rest of the NHL in the Twittersphere, too.
Over the course of the playoffs the Kings were mentioned in 1.4 million tweets. Which team had the second-most mentions? The Boston Bruins, at a lowly 830,000.
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There's a pretty simple lesson here: Combine the most improbable playoff run in NHL history with a departure from pro sports teams' typically staid social media approach to dominate the digital conversation.
A first round tweet from the official @LAKings account -- reading, "To everyone in Canada outside of BC, you're welcome," after a win over the Vancouver Canucks -- had some observers applauding while others called it a breach of etiquette. But it had everyone talking -- since April 11 it's been retweeted more than 19,000 times.
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Overall, the NHL Playoffs generated more than 3.3 million mentions on Twitter using the official hashtags #StanleyCup and #Becauseitsthecup. The most mentioned player was Philadelphia Flyers center Claude Giroux at more than 260,000. Interestingly, while the Kings dominated the team conversation, none of their players were among the most-mentioned.
Sports website TheScore used data from the social analytics company Sysomos to pull all these stats and more and produce the infographic below. Check it out for the full picture on how the Stanley Cup Playoffs played out on Twitter.
Thumbnail image courtesy TAZphotos, Flickr.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
