Former Toronto Maple Leafs winger and current TSN analyst Jeff O’Neill caught himself in quite the Twitter meltdown on Tuesday when he tweeted out a photo of his two cats, which just happened to be named after beloved Vancouver Canucks first line forwards Henrik and Daniel Sedin. O’Neill must have thought he was pretty funny, bringing up the “Sedin’s are soft” jokes that have been prevalent in the hockey community for the better part of the two Swedish players careers, but instead he ended up backing down by deleting his tweets before defending himself in a scheduled radio spot with TSN1040 in Vancouver.
According to the VancityBuzz’ Canucks 6-Pack from last night (great column and great site, so check it out), O’Neill cowered away from his tweet that he deleted. Backtracking and instead defending the fact that he even needed to explain that he actually has two cats that “look alike” that he names after Daniel and Henrik, because that makes perfect sense.
O’Neill’s interview transcript from yesterday’s interview with TSN 1040:
"“What is wrong with some people out there? Do you have any idea what is wrong with people out there?“My dog’s pet name is Pavel Brendl, and I call him that because he’s kind of lazy and he lies around.”“I have three little girls who told me to get these cats that look exactly like each other. They come up with their girly names and I have my hockey names, so for my dog I came up with Pavel Brendl, and if you’re coming up with a hockey name for two little cats, two of them boys, that look exactly like each other, what would it be?”Right so I take a picture of that and go for lunch with my wife and get tweets back at me saying, ‘He called the Sedins the “P” word.’“This is honestly insanity“I had to delete it… I don’t even know who would dream that up, that that would be my motivation. I have too much respect for the players, Trevor Linden etcetera and I’m losing faith in humanity because it’s nonsense, it’s garbage, and I can’t take it anymore.”“It’s not fair. It’s not fair. Part of it – I’m trying to share my life with people and I’m thinking to myself, this is not very hockey, manly-like to show people my cats but here goes, and then I get that as a result?… Honestly, it’s garbage and it’s not fair. It’s extremely disappointing.”"
To be fair, O’Neill *might* be genuine that he calls his cats Daniel and Henrik because they are twins, but for some strange reason it is hard to believe that the fact they are cats doesn’t play into O’Neill thinking he was being funny on Twitter yesterday. Regardless with the Canucks in first place, everyone should calm down over “Pussygate” and remind themselves that O’Neill played for the Leafs in the early 00’s, which is more than enough to laugh at. Now that we all know that Jeff O’Neill likes to name his pets after hockey players and felt the need to delete his tweet as well as to defend himself on Vancouver sports radio there is not much more to this story.