Monday, May 28, 2007

Hey "Leafs fans": Fuck you

The Ottawa Senators are skating at the doorstep of hockey supremacy. Across the country, millions are cheering for the club to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup home to Canada for the first time since 1993. Cheering are fans in the west. Cheering are fans in the east. Cheering are the fans in… Leafs nation?

A few weeks ago some buddies and I went out to watch Game 2 of the Buffalo-Ottawa series. Born and raised a Leaf fan, with memories of intense Battle of Ontario playoff clashes still fresh in mind, I was pulling for the Sabres to win the series. Actually, that’s not quite true. I wasn’t hoping Buffalo would win the series. I was hoping Ottawa would choke, fail and be embarrassed worse than the kid in high school who showered after gym in his bathing suit.

Early in the game a friend of mine -- a die-hard, raised with blue blood Maple Leaf fan -- casually explained that he was cheering for the Sens. Excuse me, what? I should have stabbed him in the eye with a fucking fork. After all the blood, sweat and tears the two teams exchanged over the last few years, how could any true Leafs fan possibly root for those nation capital pricks? Shouldn’t we hate them to our very core? It wasn’t just my friend, either; the entire bar, rooted in a city filled with Maple Leaf faithful, was raucously celebrating each Senators goal.

Is there any chance in hell this would have happened three years ago? If Ottawa knocked Toronto out of the playoffs would Buds fans cheer for the Sens “Because they’re the last Canadian team” (which, by the way, perfectly exemplifies Canada’s inferiority complex doesn’t it? Wouldn’t that be the same as Yankee fans getting knocked out and saying they’re going to cheer for the Mets “Because they’re the last New York team”? I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen)?

Admittedly, it’s not the real fans causing problems, not the ones who live, eat and breath Maple Leafs hockey (I don’t necessarily put myself in his category, by the way. A lot of these guys would pass up free sex to watch an October Leafs-Blues tilt, a sacrifice I am not yet willing to make). The real fans think the no-call of Gretzky’s high stick in 1993 was a conspiracy to avoid a Leafs-Habs Cup final. The real fans still throw up in their mouths a little when they remember how close Gary Roberts came to being a Senator. The real fans think it’s awesome Tie Domi kept banging away after he retired, except he shifted from the ice to Belinda Stonach’s vagina.

It’s the fair-weather fans giving us Leafs nation a bad name. Talk to most non-Leaf fans in Canada and they already loathe us. They claim Leafs fans are overbearing (true), they think we’re ridiculous optimists constantly claiming this is “The Year” (true), they think we live too much in the past (true) and they think we’re assholes (probably true). At least, amid our ignorance and obtrusiveness, Leaf-haters acknowledge we really care about the Leafs, however misguided our passion may be. Why take that away? Do we really need to add bandwagon jumping or selling out our own team for a hated rival to that list?

Half of Canada is cheering for the Sens right now and I’d wager a healthy handful of those people are mostly doing it because they know that for Leafs fans, watching Ottawa bring home the Stanley Cup is like watching your girlfriend bang your worst enemy on national television (well… ex-girlfriend whom we still love, I suppose, since it’s been so long since us and Stanley hooked up). They want to see us suffer. And I respect that. Yeah, I’m bitter and jaded, but considering we reminisce about the Doug Gilmour-era Leafs like they were the ’70s Habs, so should every Toronto fan be at this point. So for the next few weeks, each and every Leaf fan should be unofficially enroling as members of Ducks Nation.

But not everyone is. Some are sleeping with the enemy. Fair enough. If you’re a “Leafs fan” and you’re been cheering for Ottawa “because they’re the last Canadian team,” great. Go cheer for the Senators and stay there. One more good reason to hate those bastards.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

What's the over/under on Leaf fan suicides if they see Alfie hoisting the cup? 100? 200? 1000?

Anonymous said...

WOOOOO GO SENS. We all know that my flames are the real winners anyways.

Anonymous said...

I always cheer for my favourite former Belleville Bulls...so Cheechoo with the Sharks, Stajan, Wellwood, Newbury and Belleville native Raycroft with the Leafs, Dan Cleary with whatever team he's on (he's been around), and Spezza with the Sens. Kinda hard to avoid sports polygamy that way though.
But it looks like soon I'm going to have a new hometown team in Waterloo. Balsillie sure is persistent.

Dave A said...

Who's that other flame cheering Dave? Cause I sure didn't post that. Though I am no stranger to imposters as the London Police like to point out.

-Dave

Dave A said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dave A said...

Also, don't worry, there are still plenty of Leaf fans being bitches out there. Every bar I've gone to has had many people cheering for whoever the Senators are playing. Just look at Michael J Fox, spreading his blue and white propaganda.

"Anaheim has a lot of good Canadian stars. You got guys like Pronger, you got Giguere, and the Niedermayer brothers. So if you want to talk about Canada's team, really, Anaheim's it."

The true Leafs fans, Fox said, "will stay loyal to their team" and honour the Ontario rivalry.

I agree a true Leafs fan can't cheer for Ottawa. Fortunately for me, I hate the Leafs. My main reason is, as most Westerners will tell you, is the rediculous coverage they get, and how Harry and Bob are the most biased duo in the history of sport during and Leafs HNIC game. My newest annoyance is the Leafs slogan "The passion that unites us all."

All of us? Really? That really sums it up nicely.

-Dave

Unknown said...

Fox's reasoning behind cheering for anaheim is "shaky" at best

And I agree, slogans like "the passion that unites us all" just grind my gears... I hope all you leafs fans are ready to pay up to watch your leafs... If it isn't bad enough that it costs a small mortgage to actually GO to a leaf game, 20 games next year will be on Leafs TV only. That's right Leafers... ONE QUARTER of your season next year will essentially be pay per view.

Enjoy!

Anonymous said...

Leafs TV is $2.50 or $3.00 a month with rogers, bell, cogeco, and starchoice...is that changing?

Oilers and Canucks had it pretty bad a couple years ago when I worked for rogers. From what I remember, there were 10 to 12 games on pay per view and it was over a hundred bucks to get them all together. I'm a little sketch on the details, but it was way worse than 3 bucks a month. I also heard that Leafs TV and Raptors TV were becoming part of the main package from rogers next year.

Anonymous said...

The real reason why Ottawa is not allowed to win the cup.

"In, 1905, a member of the Ottawa Silver Seven tried to see if he could drop kick the Cup across the Rideau Canal. The attempt failed."

Enough said.

Anonymous said...

For me personally (friend who mentioned he was cheering for the sens at boston pizza in article) I find it necessary to differentiate between 'cheering' and relative indifference leaning towards ottawa for the lack of a better reason other then I have absolutely no reason to cheer for Buffalo or Anaheim. Also, to me this 'dont cheer for ottawa because of the rivalry' (which is hardly a rivalry anymore by the way) seems to be kind of petty at this point considerig the leafs didn't even make the playoffs and further resembles behaviour I would expect from regular sens fans. The same retarded fans who's current record includes booing apposing players merely for talent, cheering when an opposing team's player gets hurt, and most recently punching out a female Buffalo fan after a game...so call me old fashioned but I'd like to see the cup come north of the border where at least it would be appreciated...and it would also make me happy to see the cup go to a city that actaully has winter....Despite my above statement I do agree with Ian about these so called leafs fans who are whole heartedly cheering for the sens, for instance if a sens goal brings you out of your seat I suggest you re-evaluate your loyalties

- bucks

Anonymous said...

Personally, I would rather see the men's Olympic gold medal — or any medal for that matter — come back to Canada, before I see the Cup come back.

But what really makes my blood boil is the fact that you have a country rallying around the Senators, but the one who really benefits from it all is that rat bastard douchebag Muckler. He's happily playing up to the Canada's team line and laughing and the way to the bank.

The big lesson that should be learned by the NHL — which is desperately trying, to no avail, to figure out how to make a niche sport popular in the Southern US — is to make a those tropical hockey teams' fickle fans get caught up in the same patriotic, yet narrow-minded, "Our Country's Team" bullshit that has caught on up here.

MB

Unknown said...

Any Leafs fan cheering for or leaning towards Ottawa is not a Leafs fan -- it'd be like me cheering for the Leafs in the finals (thankfully, that's never an issue).

However, Leafs fans who say they're cheering for Anaheim because the Ducks are Canada's real team are idiots. Grow some fucking balls and admit that you're cheering against the Sens because of the rivalry -- you know it's true, and there's not shame in it. The real shame is in the fact that the two most storied franchises in professional hockey missed the playoffs and that Lord Stanley's could soon have spent its last three offseasons in Tampa Bay, Carolina and Anaheim.