How A Tweet Changed Corey Hirsch's Life

Here is a fantastic story by Curtis Rush about how Twitter helped former NHL goalie Corey Hirsch not only get a new job, but get through a rough patch in his life.

Here is the truncated story:

Last year, sitting at home alone in Phoenix, retired NHL goaltender Corey Hirsch felt like a failure, a nobody.

The phone didn't ring. Nobody was returning his calls. He could barely drag himself out of bed. He dreaded every day.

His 15-year marriage was over and the St. Louis Blues didn't renew his contract as a goalie coach. It was a double whammy.

Hirsch tried to get work. He paid his own way to Philadelphia for last summer's NHL draft. He interviewed with a few NHL teams, but nothing came of it.

Out of the blue, he tweeted something out about a hockey game he was watching, and Sportsnet hockey analyst Elliotte Friedman saw it. He thought his analysis, in less than 140 characters, was very good and could transfer nicely to a bigger stage.

"I follow Corey on Twitter, and I've talked to him a bit over his career," Friedman said by phone. "He always had a kind of a snarky and sarcastic and pretty funny way of looking at things. Some of the stuff he says is pretty funny and biting."

Friedman said he had "no idea" Hirsch was in a bad place when he put him in touch with Sportsnet producer Mitch Kerzner.

"We weren't close enough that he would share that kind of thing with me," Friedman said. "The one thing you learn, though, covering this business is when players retire it's not easy."

Kerzner took Friedman's advice and he checked Hirsch's Twitter account.

"I saw some things on Twitter that I liked so I gave him a call," Kerzner said over the phone. "I think he's got a lot of insight, but witty insight."

Hirsch said he felt comfortable right away in the studio.

"It seemed to click," he said.

That is a pretty neat story, one that may give every Tweeter hope that one day their own sassy remarks will get noticed. Witty remarks - or at least attempted witty remarks - are not hard to find on Twitter. Here is the full Curtis Rush story.

Good for Corey Hirsch, a junior hockey star and amateur Olympian who won silver in 1994 but became victim to one of the most famous goals in hockey history in doing so. Based on his junior and amateur career he never really fulfilled his potential. But he had one heck of a great "Psycho" mask: