A harmless offseason joke turned into a real talking point in Toronto, and Jeff O’Neill finally had to shut it down.
The former Maple Leafs forward said on TSN OverDrive on Thursday that the Gavin McKenna rumor making the rounds was never true in the first place. The story had started with O’Neill’s July 4 post, where he wrote, “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.”
That post exploded, drawing over 552K views along with several hundred retweets and thousands of likes. But what got lost along the way was the part O’Neill says should have been obvious: he was joking.
In the last two weeks, the tweet spread far beyond social media and landed on several mainstream news outlets, with many of them treating it like a real and pretty charming story about McKenna reaching out to a former Maple Leafs player who spent only two years with the team and scored only 39 goals combined.
O’Neill said he felt backed into a corner once the rumor had grown so large that it was bound to reach McKenna and create an awkward moment. Since he couldn’t delete the post, he decided the only move left was 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 made it clear he didn’t think he was important enough for McKenna to be checking with him about a number. O’Neill also said people he knows and respects 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 rumor had enough of a hook to feel believable to some because McKenna wasn’t sure what number to take when Sergei Bobrovsky was signed and took McKenna’s old number.
Still, O’Neill said the whole thing was meant to fade away quickly. “It was supposed to die on the vine.” He also said, “I feel like I had an intervention and I’m glad I got it off my chest.”
For O’Neill, the main concern was keeping McKenna from getting dragged into something he never did. He said admitting the whole thing was made up should prevent anyone from cornering McKenna later and claiming he had spoken to O’Neill.
And as far as O’Neill is concerned, the idea that either man would answer a random FaceTime call in the first place was always a stretch. “Who is answering a FaceTime from a rando?,” said O’Neill.
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