So, who is Hockeyy Insiderr?

I got the weirdest tweet today.

@victoriawxrhino This is going to be an off the wall question, but somebody told me you would know.Is Hockeyy Insiderr Darren Eliot?

— Sports Tough (@SportsTough) August 4, 2012

What? This Sports Tough fellow went on to inform me that I was Hockeyy Insiderr’s first ever RT. The hell is going on?

First, a little background on Hockeyy Insiderr. This anonymous Twitter feed is known for both breaking bogus NHL news (Parise to the Penguins!) as well as riling many in the NHL writing community by taking credit for scoops, when he finally gets them, and taunting anyone within earshot. He has started stating that he will reveal his identity when he reaches a certain follower level, then bought followers to screw the pooch, so to speak. I haven’t done this whole thing justice. I guess either you know about him or you don’t. Hockeybuzz has a pretty good write up on the phenomenon, though.

So where do I come in? Well, it comes back to this site, actually. The tweet RT’d? 

Sorry @adater @goalanon I just had to use your personages as characters in a very important internet post http://bit.ly/hi3HAh

— Ryan Henning (@VictoriawxRhino) January 28, 2011 

The post linked is a classic Creepy Sedin post, that plays off a mock draft that Adrian Dater and Darren Eliot produced for Sports Illustrated. The post was, as everything I write is, hilarious. Dater RT’d it. I’m not sure if that was ever Darren Eliot’s Twitter handle. It said it belonged to a Darren Eliot at the time, but the account is now deleted, and Eliot has a different handle. 

Now, let’s get around to some other points of order. Sports Tough asked me if Hockeyy Insiderr was Darren Eliot. I say, if there was evidence pointing to anything, it would be to the fact that Darren Eliot is definitely NOT Hockeyy Insiderr. Again, the first RT was by Dater, with the first subsequent RT from Hockeyy Insiderr. Eliot rarely used his orginal (theoretical) Twitter handle, and his work now is mostly business related (he works closely with Michigan Hockey now). I doubt he would be waiting to RT something that Dater put out to the world, especially if it was sent to him as well. 

I think, if anything, the mystery’s key revolves around Dater, who RT’d me in the first place.  Do I think that Dater is Hockeyy Insiderr? No. Do I think, at the very least, Dater knows who Hockeyy Insiderr is? Probably not. However, I think that Hockeyy Insiderr is a Dater hanger-on. I can’t come up with another logical explanation for why my silly little post would be his first ever RT, except that he was approving Dater’s initial RT.

As I have mentioned here before, Adrian Dater blocked me on Twitter over the course of the last year, and I believe it was after I made some stupid comment on a back and forth between him and Star Tribune writer Michael Russo. I don’t remember. I do know that Dater and Russo have regular back and forths. I also know that Russo is one of the few writers to recently respond to Insiderr’s banality, back during the Parise to the Penguins fiasco. Again, the point I am trying to make isn’t that Hockeyy Insiderr is Adrian Dater, it’s that he desperately wants to be. 

(*This is based on the premise that, in fact, Sports Tough was correct, and my tweet was the first retweet of Hockeyy Insiderr’s Twitter career)