ESPN's John Buccigross with his #bucciovertimechallenge campaign has "started a tradition that now engages thousands of hockey fans as soon as a game heads to overtime," according to Julie Robenhymer of the N.Y. TIMES. The hashtag becomes an "instant trending topic across North America" anytime an NHL game goes into overtime. Buccigross: "I had no intention of creating a brand. I just wanted to see if it could trend. So it threw it out there." Robenhymer noted the contest, in which Twitter users guess one player from each team to score the OT game-winning goal, "caught on." Buccigross eventually introduced T-shirts, and in the first year "raised enough money to donate $17,000 to charities like Defending the Blueline, the Mario Lemieux Foundation, You Can Play, the Travis Roy Foundation and Hockey in Harlem." Twitter noted that the #bucciovertimechallenge hashtag has "been used nearly two million times" in five years. With the "introduction of a website and an expanded product line that now includes hats and tank tops, Buccigross has been able to donate nearly $150,000 and expects to add at least $50,000 to that total this July." He has generated enough interest that equipment manufacturer Bauer and secondary ticket outlet TiqIQ "offer prizes for the winners." With more than 300,000 Twitter followers, Buccigross "knows his reach is large, but he also knows that he is reaching only a small slice of hockey fans." He said, "It’s just a silly little game, but as a hockey community, we’ve been able to do some really great things because of it" (N.Y. TIMES, 5/1).
