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Portland Winterhawks hooked on The Bachelor, which is apparently newsworthy (VIDEO)

Once in a great while comes a story that is a tailor-made confulence sport, social media and popular entertainment.

Finding out several of the players on the powerhouse Portland Winterhawks, including top NHL draft prospect Seth Jones, are dedicated fans of The Bachelor ... is probably not it. Finding out that teenage boys love to watch the ultimate entitled-male, submissive-female fantasy — women are there for you, just pick one — does not seem like a shocker.

Yet it was impossible to look away from Craig Birnbach's report because of the 'it's not news, it's Fark' pathos about it. Ask the players some off-beat questions, screengrab some of their tweets, get opposite reaction from grizzled overage forward Taylor Peters — a deadpan "It's disgusting, me and a couple of older guys on the team, we can't believe it" — and there's your story. One could not look away away. Especially when Winterhawks star Ty Rattie divulges, "Jonesy" — as in Seth Jones, if you're scoring at home — "and I watched it last night. Our favorite is Selma, but I kind of fell in love with Desiree last night too.”

From KATU 2 in Portland:

This is a no-judgement zone, so if that passes muster as news, then one should go along to get along. Certainly, BTN has found blog fodder from far, far, far, far less, presuming four fars is enough. Taylor Peters is already hero enough in this life, but convincingly feigning being flabbergasted over his friends' fondness for female-demographic targeting fare just takes it up to 11.

Before the days of downloading and PVRs, hockey players were often great connoisseurs of daytime TV, including soap operas. After playing a sport where collisions can have the impact of a car crash, it would seem like a good way to change the channel, as it were. It's better than watching A-Team reruns or Spike TV or something. The Bachelor's manufactured drama and cheesily telegraphed setups and situations probably provided ample opportunities for chirping at the screen. Hey, if someone had taped the Winterhawks watching the show, that would be good TV.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca (video: KATU 2, Portland).