A social media post by the National Hockey League has made a Vegreville, Alta. boy famous.
Five-year-old Liam Hirsch was sitting with his parents at Rogers Place Sunday night, as the Edmonton Oilers clobbered the Ducks and forced a seventh game in their NHL playoff series. His hysterical facial expressions and spirited dancing landed him on Twitter.
“Liam was just trying to get on the Jumbotron,” his mother Jamie said Monday. “That was his goal – to have the guys there show him – which he never made it onto the Jumbotron. But little did we know, he was becoming famous.”
Admittedly, the pint-sized hockey fan doesn’t know what celebrity means. He does know he’s famous though.
Liam’s splash on social media has already made it to the schoolyard.
“Our staff in kindergarten promptly showed me the tweets that were going out and how he’s going viral on the NHL feed on Twitter, so we’ve posted that,” said Melanie Sorochan, assistant principal, St. Martin’s Catholic School. “I’ve retweeted that as our famous kindergarten student, so we are very excited that Liam’s put our little school on the map.”
The caption on the wildly popular tweet reads: “The mood in Edmonton. #StanleyCup.”
READ MORE: Oilers’ Game 6 trouncing of the Ducks sets off social media explosion
Jamie said she wasn’t aware of Liam’s burgeoning fame at the time of the game, but it didn’t take long before she clued in.
“I look in my purse and look at my phone and I have 30 text messages from friends and family letting us know that he was on TV. And we had videos and pictures and it went all over Facebook and Twitter,” she said.
“I’ve got calls from my sister who lives in Texas and she saw it. And friends of hers in Hong Kong saw it – and we just didn’t expect this.”
READ MORE: Edmonton Oilers force Game 7 after devastating the Ducks in 7-1 win
After the game had come to an end, Liam’s smiles had turned to tears and the cameras captured it. His Connor McDavid teddy bear fell on the ground into a puddle of beer.
“We were joking that he wanted eight goals and that’s why he was crying,” Jamie said.
The family is set to board a flight to Anaheim later this week. Liam’s bear hasn’t been washed in order to preserve any left over luck for Game 7.