Meta removes fake hockey fan pages amid playoffs
- Published on June 4, 2026 at 23:03
- 4 min read
- By Marisha GOLDHAMER, AFP Canada
Meta has removed 39 Facebook pages that were pushing false claims about famous National Hockey League players following an AFP investigation. The pages were managed from Vietnam and capitalizing on interest in the Stanley Cup playoffs to farm engagement and drive traffic to articles on websites overrun with advertisements.
With names including "Hockey Lovers Hub" and "Montreal Hockey Pulse," the dozens of pages identified by AFP were churning out a constant stream of claims primed to attract NHL fans. Combined, the accounts had gathered some 244,600 followers.
On June 4, Meta told AFP it had removed the pages for violating platform policies.
Since the start of 2026, the pages had deployed one key tactic to garner sympathetic engagement: they repeatedly claimed that famed players had been diagnosed with cancer.
Under a "breaking news" banner, nearly identical posts across the network of pages declared that legendary former fan favorites were suffering from stage IV glioblastoma, including: Mario Lemieux, Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Larry Robinson, Chris Chelios, Duncan Keith, Roberto Luongo, Guy Carbonneau, Darryl Sittler, Doug Gilmour, Mikko Koivu and Mats Sundin.
At age 27, Lemieux was treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma, but he returned to the ice just two months later in 1993. Other ex-players named by the pages have been treated for skin cancer, but there is no indication any of the greats have aggressive brain cancer.
Robinson, who starred for the Montreal Canadiens and Los Angeles Kings and later coached the Kings, addressed the claim on X, saying he was "getting lots of calls due to someone creating fake news" (archived here).
"I'm alive and well and have no brain cancer," he said in the January 12, 2026 post.
There were additional clues to the falsity of the claims. One March post, for example, alleged that Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby had been diagnosed, even as the Canadian center was actively competing in games.
An identical claim about Stan Mikita appeared on May 4, despite the Chicago Blackhawks legend having died in 2018.
Mikita had survived tongue cancer after his career, and a posthumous study of his brain found he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy -- a condition developed following repeated blows to the head -- at the time of his death.
Unconfirmed charitable giving
While Hockey Fights Cancer, an annual initiative supported by NHL players, has raised millions for cancer research, the pages also regularly praised players for unverified acts of generosity toward cancer patients.
Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews and forward William Nylander were both claimed to have "unexpectedly paid the hospital bills for 50 cancer patients in Toronto." But in Canada, most treatments are covered by public health insurance.
Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was similarly said to have picked up medical bills for "50 cancer patients in Rapid City, South Dakota" -- a town with which he has no known affiliation.
Identifying phony pages
Meta users can check several signals to determine if a Facebook page is authentic, including the date the page was created and the location of people running it. Such information is found under the account's "Page transparency" tab (archived here).
The fraudulent hockey fan pages identified by AFP all had administrators in Vietnam. None were operated from the United States or Canada, where the professional franchises are based.
These type of inauthentic fan pages are fueled by content farms which can profit from website traffic.
Readers who followed the page's links to articles were confronted with ad-covered websites and stories that included no confirmations from any players, teams or other official sources.
The articles also contained unnatural English phrasing and homoglyphs -- characters that look similar but are encoded differently -- pointing to the likely use of artificial intelligence, as AFP has reported in previous fact-checks.
AFP has similarly found fake content targeting baseball fans, and Meta separately removed 13 pages after an investigation revealed that inauthentic tennis and swimming fan accounts had pivoted to systematically spread disinformation about Australian politics.
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