A happy face tweet posted Saturday night by Montreal Canadiens' forward Devante Smith-Pelly has lit some passionate response.

The two-character tweet consisting of a colon and a closed parenthesis :) would usually be considered one of the most benign things one could post on social media.

However the hard-hitting Hab posted the joyous emoticon as his former team the Anaheim Ducks were being eliminated from the Stanley Cup semifinals by the Chicago Blackhawks, leading to the conclusion that he was glad that his former team had been eliminated.

Smith-Pelly, 22, was sent to the Canadiens just prior to the NHL trade deadline in return for promising young Czech forward Jiri Sekac.

The tweet elicited over 150 responses, 1,500 retweets and almost 2,000 favourites within 12 hours. Many of those who replied to Smith-Pelly were less than flattering towards his apparent joy at the Ducks being eliminated.

Smith-Pelly did not apologize or delete the tweet, instead he retweeted another tweet praising him for "having a bit of fun on Twitter."