Olen Zellweger was up early.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Anaheim Ducks defenseman had woken just before 5 a.m. PT on Feb. 22 to join the rest of the hockey world in watching the men\u2019s Olympic gold medal game.<\/p>\n
A few hours later, the \u201cpassionate\u201d Canadian watched as American Jack Hughes scored in overtime to give the United States its first men\u2019s hockey gold in 46 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pissed that Canada lost,\u201d Zellweger said. \u201cEspecially against the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that day, Zellweger joined teammates for a Ducks-organized event at Disneyland. A day of rides and a parade couldn\u2019t get his mind off the bitter loss. In moments of downtime, he scrolled through videos of Team USA celebrating. In the middle of the theme park, Zellweger let out his frustration \u2014 on Instagram.<\/p>\n
One by one, he unfollowed four of the most prominent American players: Jack Hughes, Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel and Clayton Keller. Harmless, he thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little housekeeping,\u201d Zellweger said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I don\u2019t like those guys. I started following them when I was a kid. Like, 12.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he arrived at Ducks practice the next day, Zellweger heard three words that would make many young players quiver.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve gone viral,\u201d a team media relations representative told him.<\/p>\n
Zellweger, an affable player still on his entry-level contract, said he didn\u2019t intend for anyone to notice his social media moves.<\/p>\n
It turns out, he didn\u2019t have a choice.<\/p>\n
Three months earlier, an X account launched with little fanfare. Named NHL Follow Tracker (@NHLFollowTrack), the account began posting multiple updates every hour on who NHL players and teams followed and unfollowed on Instagram, one of the world\u2019s most popular social media platforms.<\/p>\n
At 2:48 a.m. ET on Feb. 23, NHL Follow Tracker posted an update about Zellweger\u2019s Instagram account: large red X emojis beside the names of the players he had unfollowed.<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udc49 olenzellweger (Olen Zellweger) started following 0 and unfollowed 6:<\/p>\n
\u274c _ellerylopez (elle) \u2014 NHL Follow Tracker (@NHLFollowTrack) February 23, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n As Team USA\u2019s celebrations turned political and sparked controversy, the post took off. It has since garnered well over 1,000 re-posts and dozens of replies.<\/p>\n \u201cOh he was CHEESED lmao what a patriot,\u201d one user wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cOlen Zellweger woke? This is a joke,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n \u201cI was shocked that it went viral,\u201d Zellweger said. \u201cThose guys don\u2019t know me.\u201d<\/p>\n That did not matter to the online world.<\/p>\n Zellweger, depending on how you see it, was one of the first casualties or beneficiaries of an X account that has offered a revealing look at NHL player interests, including potential romantic connections and political leanings.<\/p>\n The account is growing \u2014 closing in on 17,300 followers. And its ability to gain significant attention in certain moments has been noticed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole league knows about it,\u201d said Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Troy Stecher, shaking his head. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty invasive.\u201d<\/p>\n Fuat Aras had never watched a full NHL game when he first landed on Vancouver Island last year. He\u2019d never even been to Canada before when he traveled from his native Istanbul, Turkey, to study for his MBA at Vancouver Island University.<\/p>\n After a few days in his new home, the inquisitive student learned Canadians followed hockey with the same fervency with which he supported his favorite Istanbul-based soccer team, Fenerbahce.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I needed to learn about hockey to integrate into Canadian culture,\u201d Aras said.<\/p>\n Aras liked what he saw. The pace, the physicality. It was unlike anything he\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n He quickly became \u201caddicted\u201d to hockey after watching his first few Vancouver Canucks games, regardless of their place at the bottom of the NHL\u2019s standings. And the game itself only whetted his appetite for more information.<\/p>\n Aras comes from a place where sports media can be more aggressive than in Canada. Any crumb of information about players is quickly baked into full-blown stories, for better or worse. If a player leaves a comment on another player\u2019s Instagram account, it will likely become a story in Europe.<\/p>\n Aras was simultaneously working on a different coding project that involved scraping real-time data from Instagram.<\/p>\n \u201cInformation is money these days, as you know,\u201d Aras said.<\/p>\n In the middle of watching a game, he had the idea: What if I created a bot to track the Instagram activity of NHL players?<\/p>\n \u201cBut I wasn\u2019t sure it was interesting, or that it would catch interesting things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As Zellweger can attest, Aras was wrong.<\/p>\n He started by scouring NHL rosters online and manually searching for over 700 NHL player and team accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that was very hard,\u201d Aras said. \u201cI put the information into my bot and that bot scans every player\u2019s account.\u201d<\/p>\n The Instagram accounts players and teams follow and unfollow is then fed, via Aras\u2019s program, into the X feed. Each player or team who makes an addition or subtraction receives an X post, sometimes highlighting multiple follows and unfollows.<\/p>\n \u201cI have checked and there isn\u2019t anything like this for the NFL or soccer,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe I will start something similar for the NFL?\u201d<\/p>\n Aras warns before he speaks that English is not his native language and that he might make grammatical errors.<\/p>\n There is still an almost na\u00efve charm to how Aras speaks about hockey, his new obsession. He accidentally calls the Toronto Maple Leafs the \u201cToronto Maples.\u201d He mispronounces the names of prominent NHL players he now tracks daily. Having only begun watching the NHL over the last year, Aras is still unaware of which players are bona fide celebrities and which are not.<\/p>\n He did not know why his post about Zellweger went viral. Nor did he know that Johnny Gaudreau, one of the players his account tracked and posted about, tragically died before last season. Aras stopped tracking Gaudreau\u2019s Instagram account in March.<\/p>\n Aras said he averages about three hours a day working on his account. As of March, he said the account gains anywhere between 50 and a few hundred new followers a day. He believes his posts are viewed over one million times a day.<\/p>\n Aras shared insights about his account via screenshots reviewed by The Athletic: the majority of fans (52 percent) who view the account are female. The most prominent age group of viewers is 18- to 24-year-olds.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first, it was just a hobby,\u201d Aras said. \u201cBut then I saw that people loved it, probably because of the gossip that comes from it.\u201d<\/p>\n NHL teams were some of the first to take note.<\/p>\n The Boston Bruins purposely unfollowed every other NHL team\u2019s Instagram account, which NHL Follow Tracker revealed. The Winnipeg Jets began following multiple Jets-themed accounts. When NHL Follow Tracker revealed the Edmonton Oilers began following new acquisition Connor Murphy, the Oilers X account acknowledged it with an emoji.<\/p>\n \u201cThe evolution was: How can we have fun with this? Fans are smart enough to know that we were doing things to interact with them indirectly,\u201d said one administrator of a prominent NHL team\u2019s social media account, who was not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not all fun, though. Perceived controversy moves the needle, too.<\/p>\n After Jeff Skinner was placed on waivers by the San Jose Sharks for the purpose of contract termination in March, both the player and the team unfollowed each other. Those respective posts combined for nearly 4,000 likes.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49 jeffskinner (Jeff Skinner) started following 0 and unfollowed 1:<\/p>\n \u274c sanjosesharks (San Jose Sharks)
\ud83d\udd17 https:\/\/t.co\/qBEDkpFMBd<\/a>
\u274c austonmatthews (AM)
\ud83d\udd17 https:\/\/t.co\/hpdh4nwQ3I<\/a>
\u274c claytonkeller19 (Clayton Keller)
\ud83d\udd17 https:\/\/t.co\/BKivOC7LND<\/a>
\u274c jackeichel (Jack Eichel)
\ud83d\udd17\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/FvAqh2Lyfh<\/a><\/p>\n
\ud83d\udd17 https:\/\/t.co\/Vrt3skSCPa<\/a>#NHL<\/a> #TheFutureIsTeal<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/oNz15ZPLDM<\/a><\/p>\n