The Montreal Canadiens attempt to celebrate reaching one million Twitter followers went terribly awry Tuesday night.
As explained on the team's website, fans who followed the team and tweeted using the hashtag "#CanadiensMTL1M" would receive a special video message from a player.
Adding "surprise" to the hashtag gave Twitter users the additional benefit of having their handles depicted on the back of a Canadiens jersey.
Unfortunately, the seemingly innocent promotion was trending for all the wrong reasons when users with racial slurs in their handles began replying, prompting automatic responses from the team's Twitter account.
The Canadiens celebrate one million Twitter followers with a few surprises for you! -> https://t.co/7f0QjBsLT7 pic.twitter.com/8HhIEkod5K
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) February 24, 2016
It was a situation similar to what happened with the New England Patriots in November 2014.
The Canadiens promotion kicked off before 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and offensive automated tweets were still rolling out almost 2 1/2 hours later.
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