When it comes to Vancouver perhaps most of the postgame focus will be on a few hundred rioters. Its too bad because I thought the fans in the rink and the players on the ice (for both sides) were classy after the game. And Ryan Kesler pretty much sums it up for me.
Stay tuned in the future because I'm stewing over a post on what I think is wrong with the NHL. As one who grew up on hockey and yet hadn't watched a game in several years I have a few thoughts stemming from the hours spent following it so closely again this year. Don't worry, this is not going to be an attempt to discredit the Bruins (and I'll give it a few days to make sure). Congratulations have to go to the Boston Bruins, and especially to Tim Thomas, for winning the Stanley Cup.
Sunday reading
7 hours ago
4 comments:
We were disappointed here over the loss to. As far as the riots go though this is not a new thing, they do it even if their team wins. It's disappointing to watch people act that way.
Although I'm pretty sure that football fans across the world are just as bad, or worse. :)
I'll say here what I just said on soapbox, I mean facebook:
let's distinguish between Canucks, fans, and rioters - but not self-righteously. after all, this very sport of ours has for decades thrived on an ethos where degrees of violence and retribution are considered honourable and "part of the game". If anyone can criticize the rioters it is the Sedins, who by not punching back are more "man" (if I must trade on gender stereotypes) than a thousand rioters will ever be.
Sorry about the (your) loss, Jon.
Championships are elusive.
I've got nothing to say about the riots, but as for hockey, it just has no allure for me whatsoever. I used to watch when I was younger, but now, to me, the sport is just broken. And not just on an NHL level, but from the bottom up.
Sure, they can get the kids to wear ties and shake hands at the end of the game, but for the most part it's a culture that harbours disrespect and classlessness.
(A couple years ago the bantam team from our town had to get a police escort out of another town after the championship final. Not only were the kids fighting, but coaches and parents as well got into it that night).
Jon, I haven't watched hockey for a number of years precisely because it lost its "allure", like you said. Around Christmas time when I started to keep an eye on my boyhood team again I was surprised by (a) the level of emotional investment I still had in them and (b) the fact that I kind of liked the brand of hockey they were trying to play. I could go in for an NHL that was more, to borrow the ethnocentric stereotype for a moment, "european". In other words, more like the olympics and less like the nhl. I could get behind a team that, in principle, wanted to play "between the whistles".
Now I feel pretty swept up in it (see a above) and so I have to decide whether to be a fan again (and thus say my piece) or leave it be and just show up again next time my team makes the playoffs.
That hockey culture you refer to -- I've been a part of it before. Its not good. I don't like it. I don't like that its normal.
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