How This NHL Team Photoshopped Masks Onto Fans

As sporting events continue to open publicly, the Pittsburgh Penguins team has come under fire for a social media fiasco involving photoshopped masks. 

On March 3rd, the team put out the following message over Twitter, one which would soon become a big mistake for the organization. 

“We just had to say this again…thanks for the continued support, Penguins fans.”

The message was accompanied by a graphic picturing a group of game attendees, all of whom seemed to be having a good time. Upon closer examination, however, it appeared to Twitter users that some of the people depicted in the photo weren’t actually wearing masks properly. Still, the image was altered to make it seem as if they were. 

Pictured in the top right section of Pittsburgh’s tweet, a woman with a red face covering appears to be enjoying the game alongside her mask-wearing counterparts. That is until you look at the image up close. In doing so, it becomes excruciatingly obvious that her mask had been photoshopped on and altered to seem as if she was wearing it correctly.

Edited photo tweeted by the Pittsburgh Penguins

Unedited stock versions of the photo were released, and they revealed that the fan in question was wearing a mask below her mouth, and the image had been edited to avoid bad PR. The same problem applied to another man in attendance, whose mask had also been photoshopped to hide the fact that it was being worn incorrectly.

Similarly, the generic stock photo showed that Pittsburgh had expressly excluded another fan from their tweet, one who wasn’t wearing any mask at all.

This revelation angered many fans, who were upset that Pittsburgh was falsifying their enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions for good press.

Since then, the team has released a response statement, in which they note that the employee’s actions were a clear violation of social media and safety policy, writing, “Our social media team should never send out altered photos to our fan base.” They also reinforced their regulatory policy for game attendance, confirming that staff implementation is frequently used to uphold their zero-tolerance policy regarding improper mask usage. 

No knowledge about who published the image and what happened to them has been released at this time.