Toronto Maple Leafs
Maple Leafs Host Clears Up Ridiculous Gavin McKenna Rumor
A strange rumor went around about Gavin McKenna asking permission about his jersey number. The former player involved has cleared things up.
It’s the dog days of the NHL offseason, and with it comes the search for stories to discuss. A recent one out of Toronto had to do with Gavin McKenna, who reportedly called former Maple Leafs Jeff O’Neill and sought permission to wear No. 92.
Interestingly, it was O’Neill who started the rumor, posting on July 4 that McKenna reached out. O’Neill posted, “Last night I got a FaceTime after dinner. Gavin asked if it was cool if he wore the number. I said, ’ It’s the only way to go, son. LFG.” The post got over 552K views, several hundred retweets, and thousands of likes. What no one seemed to catch on to was that O’Neill was joking.
During a spot on TSN OverDrive on Thursday, the conversation about that post resurfaced because, in the last two weeks, the tweet took on a life of its own. The story was shared on several mainstream news outlets, many of them saying how cool it was that McKenna would take the time to reach out to a Maple Leafs player who played only two years with the organization and scored only 39 goals combined.
O’Neill Had to Come Clean About the McKenna Post
Feeling guilty that the talk had reached a point where it was bound to get back to McKenna and create an awkward situation, O’Neill confessed that he was being a goof and that things had gotten to the point where he was stuck. He couldn’t delete the tweet, so he had to clear the air.
“I have to confess something, and it’s something that should be so obvious….Gavin McKenna did NOT, nor would he ever, call me to get my input on wearing No. 92,” said O’Neill. He added that he wasn’t nearly important enough to warrant McKenna having to check with him first. O’Neill said so many people he loved and respected told him, “It’s pretty cool that he called me…. I was just trying to have some fun on social media.”
“I’m not important enough for anyone to FaceTime me and ask, ‘Can I wear your number?’
The story became somewhat plausible because McKenna wasn’t sure what number to take when Sergei Bobrovsky was signed and took McKenna’s old number.
O’Neill said, “It was supposed to die on the vine.” He added, “I feel like I had an intervention and I’m glad I got it off my chest.” He said that admitting the story was made up felt cleansing, and now there shouldn’t be a moment where someone asks McKenna about it and then says he never talked to O’Neill.
The whole idea that O’Neill or McKenna would even pick up a random FaceTime call is unbelievable. “Who is answering a FaceTime from a rando?,” said O’Neill, assuming everyone would understand he was just messing around when he tweeted what he did.
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