Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThis article is also worth a look. I would imagine it’s not as accurate as the author claims, I know a lot of fans from the Western Conference hate the Vancouver Canucks, if you don’t believe me just ask Wild and Blackhawks fans, add to the fact that a lot of hockey fans hate the on ice antics of the Vancouver Canucks. Jonah Keri; GQ ---- "WE WANT THE CUP!"
Of course you want the Cup. Everyone wants the Cup.
They want it in Buffalo, where snake-bitten fans have seen their dreams crushed for decades. They want it in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where two different franchises have struggled in vain to get close. They want it in Winnipeg, 15 years after the Jets left town, months before a new, nameless team takes the ice.
If any of those teams win Lord Stanley's grail, that would be fine with the hockey world. Those cities have seen enormous sports heartbreak, their spirits deflated as they trudge through January blizzards waiting for their shot at the big one. If a parade runs through Chippewa Street next summer, mazel tov. They'll deserve it.
But you, Bruins fans? No one wants you to have it.
Oh sure, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to jump on the Bruins bandwagon. This is an anonymous, lunch pail-carrying team. Only one Bruin cracked 30 goals this season, and he's a gritty two-way player from Vancouver who goes by Looch. One of their best players is a 21-year NHL veteran, also from B.C., still going strong at 43. Boston's goalie was a 217th overall draft pick, toiled for years in the minors and in Europe, didn't become a starter until age 31, and six years later might be the best netminder on the planet.
This series should have reinforced pro-Bruins sentiment. Vancouver's Alex Burrows biting Patrice Bergeron's fingers was a punk move, one that would have been handled with a flurry of right hooks to the head if this were 30 years ago and the game hadn't turned away from fighting. Maxim Lapierre's Game 2 taunt, where he stuck his fingers in Bergeron's face and dared him to bite back, wasn't much better.
And there's The Hit. Five minutes into Game 3, Aaron Rome lined up Nathan Horton, watched him get rid of the puck, took three strides, dipped his shoulder, leapt for the head, and blew him up. However you felt about the hit, you had to feel for Horton, laid out on the ice, his teammates and 17,565 spectators looking on in horror, medics fumbling with a stretcher, trying to stabilize the big Ontarian before the frantic ride to Mass General.
The Bruins responded with eight goals in the final two periods. After the game, they placed The Jacket—an old Bruins warmup awarded to a player who made a special contribution to that night's victory—in Horton's locker. The last player to receive The Jacket was also Horton, after his game-winning goal in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. This was Win One for the Gipper stuff, the 1970 Willis Reed-inspired Knicks crossed with the '93 Islanders rallying after Dale Hunter cheapshotted Pierre Turgeon's shoulder into oblivion.
And you know what? We're still not rooting for you.
No one in Canada wants you to win, of course. Not when a Canadian team might bring the Cup back home for the first time in 18 years.
But U.S. hockey fans aren't behind you either. There's none of that (slightly weird) national pride here. Flyers fans hate Boston. Rangers fans hate Boston. Casual hockey fans in Boise or Mobile are, at best, indifferent about Boston.
You know what everyone really hates? When Boston fans complain about The Drought. The Bruins haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1972. Old-timers get weepy for Orr and Esposito and Bucyk, wish for one more Cup before they die.
Sure, Boston was once a suffering sports town. Injuries derailed Larry Bird's career, and Lenny Bias' tragic death sent the Celtics into mediocrity for nearly two decades. The mismanaged Red Sox ran out a series of bloated, overpaid veterans, only to see the rest of the division—Toronto, Baltimore, and the hated Yankees—stomp all over them. Curse or not, 86 years without a title would wound any sports fan. The Patriots? They just sucked. So yeah, those were tough times for Boston sports fans.
Now? You sound like the douchebag who bitches that, after the three-bedroom in Tribeca, the place in the Hamptons, the kids' boarding school, the annual trips to Paris and Aruba, the four cars, and two alimonies, you've barely got enough left for that third bottle of Dom at Per Se.
The vast, vast, vast majority of Bruins fans are also Sox fans, C's fans, and Pats fans. The Celtics won the city's most recent title, in 2008. If the Bruins win the Cup this year, the Boston pro sports team with the longest championship drought will be the Patriots, who won the Super Bowl in...2004.
Meanwhile, the Canucks have existed for 41 years and haven't won jack. Vancouver had an NBA team once. They were run into the ground by an incompetent stooge, then shipped off to Memphis.
We hope Nathan Horton makes a full recovery. We feel for the 12 Bruins fans who've shunned the city's other franchises and waited nearly 40 years for their shot.
