Media gets fooled by fake Elias Pettersson blockbuster trade

Vancouver Canucks forward Elias Pettersson has been the source of trade rumors for years at this point. His name has been in and out of rumors since at least 2023 and with the NHL's trade deadline looming on Friday, it's no surprise that he's back in the headlines.

It also wouldn't be a surprise to see him shipped to a team like the Detroit Red Wings. After all, the Red Wings are a team on the rise and they have plenty of assets that the Canucks, theoretically, might be interested in. What we DO know right now though is that there has been no trade between the Canucks and the Red Wings concerning Pettersson and somebody might wanna tell The Hockey News and Yahoo...

Both publications ran with fake news reports that the Red Wings had acquired Pettersson in a blockbuster deal for a 1st round pick and 21 year old former 9th overall pick Nate Danielson.

The story was originally shared to Twitter by a fake Elliotte Friedman account...

And here are the reports from both publications:

Oof... that's a big swing and a miss.

Look, I write for a hockey blog that draws heavily on social media to source rumor reports. I understand the irony of me calling out THN and Yahoo for getting duped... but the reality is that you simply can't fall for this stuff in 2026.

The prevalence of fake news is rampant, but it takes less than a minute to fact check these sorts on things these days. Tough look for two giants of the hockey blogging world.