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...

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