Smith-Pelly Enrages Anaheim Fans After Elimination

This is great.  Devante Smith-Pelly caused a serious uproar late last night at the end of the Anaheim Game 7 loss.

And the beauty of it resides in the fact that twitter erupted without Smith-Pelly even typing a full word.

Just a simple smile.

But that’s all it took to enrage an already emotional Ducks fanbase.

The Anaheim Ducks brought Devante Smith-Pelly into the league.  And then traded him to Montreal in late February.

Even though he still has friends on the team, he admits that he was rooting against the Ducks.

From the Montreal Gazette:

His Twitter mentions from Ducks fans, that is, comments tagged to the tweet, referenced his body size, many times; the couch on which he was watching the playoffs; his NHL future; and much, much worse.

“The worst one?” Smith-Pelly said with a laugh, repeating the question 12 hours after the skies had opened. “That I was too bad to be on a (crappy) team, that the Canadiens had lost in the second round. It was hilarious. I thought it was great.”

There’s some history here, of course.

Smith-Pelly, 22, was traded to the Canadiens in late February for forward Jiri Sekac; it was the Ducks who brought Smith-Pelly into the NHL in the second round of the 2010 entry draft, 42nd overall.

The Toronto native played the first 129 games of his NHL career with Anaheim (12 more in the playoffs), skating 20 and a dozen more in the postseason with the Canadiens this season.

Smith-Pelly still has great friends on the Ducks and in their organization, and he remains in touch with many of them.

But here he was on Saturday night, out with friends in Toronto, celebrating a buddy’s birthday, when his former team moved to the brink of elimination.

And on his smartphone, he tweeted : )

Ka-boom.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Smith-Pelly said. “I didn’t think people would be that upset about it but that’s the way Twitter goes, I guess.”

Indeed, Ducks fans went berserk.

Image courtesy of Lisa Gansky.