If you’re a sports bettor and you’re not on Twitter,  you’re really missing out. And last night’s Toronto Maple Leafs game is a perfect example.

About a half hour before the Leafs hosted the Philadelphia Flyers, Toronto’s starting goalie Jonas Gustavsson got hurt during pre-game warmups. The news spread quickly on Twitter as beat reporters tweeted out the news.

With Gustavsson’s injury, the Leafs were forced to start minor league goalie Jussi Rynnas in what would be his first ever NHL game. And get this: the Leafs would only have one goalie available for the game. So if Rynnas got injured, Toronto would have been forced to play a position player in net.

If you were on Twitter and following the right people, you had this news virtually instantaneously. Indeed, you could see it and react faster than oddsmakers. When this news was tweeted out, the Flyers were -155 at many offshore books. It stayed that way for a little while. Some shops then adjusted the Flyers up to -160. But the line never moved beyond that. It’s hockey, after all, and sports books, which don’t generate all that much hockey betting action, simply aren’t paying that much attention to breaking hockey news.

We re-tweeted the breaking news at 6:55pm, about 10 minutes before the opening face-off.

If you were on Twitter and moved fast, you could have gotten down on Philly at -155. And if you did, it paid off. Easily.

The Leafs, losers of of 9 of their last 13 games going into last night’s affair with the Flyers, rolled over quickly. They lost 7-1 and, frankly, it wasn’t that close. The young Finnish goalie who was making his first ever NHL start looked like a goalie who was making his first ever NHL start.

Without Twitter, we wouldn’t have been on the Flyers last night. But thanks to Twitter, we were.