Arizona Llamas Derail Sports Media

Arizona Llamas run loose, hockey media is derailed for nearly an hour

I’m the first person to admit that I’ve got a short attention span.

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If someone tweets a picture of Arizona Llamas on the loose, let’s be honest — any hope of me getting work done for the next hour is pretty much gone. Llamas are awesome, and I can’t even begin to deny that.

Of course, I wasn’t expecting to see the entirety of the sports media community go nuts over it with me:

I’ve only been in Phoenix proper for about a month and a half, so I’m still getting used to the area. Acclimated, if you will. I wasn’t expecting to see a pair of llamas on the loose, therefore, so I jokingly tweeted about the escaped animals and my sheer terror at the thought of going outside.

Imagine my surprise when I wasn’t the only sports media member who kind of took off running with it:

It started off with everyone in disbelief over the fact that there were llamas on the loose, and the even weirder fact that actual members of the Phoenix community were attempting to catch them. With their bare hands, because apparently we’re all now zookeepers who know how to do that correctly.

From there, though, the fact that you could watch the llamas running free live — and, to be completely honest, it was pretty hilarious to witness — became national news. National sports news, as a matter of fact, since it appears that the vast majority of sports media personnel are basically overgrown children.

(Michael Hurley, for those who don’t follow him, is a reporter for CBS Boston. He was quite entranced by the llamas, as were we all.)

It was once the llamas were finally caught, though, that sports Twitter discovered that this story was actually a gold mine for the NHL.

Fans of the teams most heavily involved in trade rumors started to demand swaps of the llamas for legitimate NHL players, because we all have trade deadline fever and probably haven’t slept much in the last few days (thanks, Evander Kane, for setting THAT ball rolling way too early this year). Jason Chimera? The Washington Capitals are offering him for both llamas. The Ottawa Senators are reporting that the llama has demanded a trade there. The Edmonton Oil Kings even decided that the Arizona Llamas were good substitutes for all the Arizona Coyotes prospects they’ve had on their roster in the past few seasons, and asked the WHL Official Twitter if they were allowed to list llamas on their roster.

Then, somehow, it caught wind that these llamas are probably just the most die-hard Arizona Coyotes fans ever. This is a real thing that happened, guys:

It’s been kind of a tough season, so seeing the entirety of hockey Twitter band together on something — and seeing the Arizona Coyotes as the most relevant, talked-about team in the NHL — was kind of cool.

The Coyotes HAVE to beat the Rangers tonight. Do it for the llamas, Mike Smith.

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