Tweeting from the blue line

Written by Kathryn Uggerholt | 02 October 2011

You ever wonder how excited a hockey player might be when he has a great game? Or maybe you’re wondering some of the stuff they’re leaning in to tell their teammates on the bench. With the advent of Twitter, now fans can know the quirks they never did before.

 One of the Providence Bruins that likes to tweet and chirp his teammates is defenseman Ryan Button.  

 “I love using it and fans love it to so why not?” he says of the social media site.

Button is about to embark on his first full season with the Providence Bruins after spending his junior career in the WHL with the Prince Albert Raiders and Seattle Thunderbirds. He came to the Dunk in Providence at the tail end of last season where he played seven games and notched an assist. 

He may have only been in Providence since the end of March for a few games but he’s been entertaining his fans on Twitter since the end of February. Whether it be his adventures at Johnny Boychuk’s Stanley Cup party or Arnold Palmer Iced Tea from Craig Cunningham, Button tweets pictures and interacts with his fans to keep things interesting.

Just the other day Button needed a place to eat in Providence and with the help of Twitter, he found a great place. “That’s one of the perks of twitter especially if you have quite a few followers,” he says, “They’ll tweet you back within minutes and it really helps.”

 “I really enjoy twitter because I think it’s a great way to interact with the fans and I think the fans really enjoy it,” Button said but at the same time, he knows there is a fine line.

 “Fans can really get on you. You can play a great game and they say ‘Oh you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to Boston” and then the next night you play a bad game and everyone kind of bashes you,” he said of some negative fans.

It isn’t just negative fans that log onto Twitter to track the hockey players they love to watch, but some interesting ones as well. Has Button gotten any @ replies that are that bad yet?

“I haven’t gotten anything crazy yet,” Button laughed. “There’s definitely some players like Jared Knight and Ryan Spooner who have quite a few more followers who have crazy fans,” he continued.  He mentioned too the amount of people that follow Tyler Seguin, pointing out that you have to watch even more what you say when you’re “a guy like that.”

To make sure players are watching what they say, all the Bruins rookies actually had to go to a social media class over the summer as a part of their development camp. Button says it was a lot of telling people just to watch what they tweet and that with media being so powerful, once it is out the whole world knows.

“We might think something is funny and want to put it on Twitter. You kind of type it out and then there’s always another meaning to some phrase,” he said of his carefulness in what to put out into the 140 character world.

Twitter is far from serious for Button however, one can tell just from scrolling through his timeline. You can see a chirpfest amongst him and his teammates and everything is just in good fun. As for any possibility of an AHL tweeting policy, he says he could always lay off Twitter for a few hours.

There are a lot of people Button says he likes to follow like his friends and family from back home as well as other people playing in the league. Just as well he still likes to follow his friends from juniors to “stay caught up and what they’re doing in their places and where they’re going.”

Now, after reading this you’re obviously going to go follow @buttsy78. He’s roughly 75 followers from a thousand and though he said Friday he would throw out a tweet about making a donation somewhere when he got closer, he could not resist sending it out earlier. Button tweeted he would $50 to a charity of his 1000^th followers’ choice when the moment comes. So give him a follow, him and the rest of the squad.