It’s Friday night and I’m surfing around while listening to the Canucks-Wild game on the Team 1040. The Canucks are just about to lose their fourth in a row and doubt is growing in Vancouver that they’ll make the playoffs.
I have to say it’s very, very unrewarding to be a Vancouver fan – it’s almost enough to put someone off of hockey.
The problems?
- Can’t score
- Can’t keep the puck out of their own net
- Not tough enough
- Not big enough
- Not enough heart
It has not been pretty lately.
. . .
. . .
BTW, I’ve joined a 3-on -3 league at the Abbotsford Training Rink, a half-size rink. I haven’t had this much fun playing hockey for years … it’s all offence, offence, offence.
That’s a bit melodramatic isn’t it? This is why Canuck’s fans drive me crazy!
It’s the constant, unremitting mediocrity, Greg, that wears down one’s defenses against negativism.
Then follow the Giants! Maybe it’s because of the mediocrity, but the thing that gets me is that many Canucks fans will find something wrong no matter what the case. A few years ago I seem to recall it was, ‘man we have no goalie, if only we had a goalie’, now it’s ‘our team is too defensive, too boring’. I’m convinced that the Canucks will win the Cup one day, and the next day someone will still be calling in and complaining about something (‘they weren’t exciting enough to watch,’ ‘yeah, but they won’t do it ever again,’ something like that). I truly believe that, like English soccer fans, (many) Canucks fans like it better when they are losing then winning, because it gives them something to complain about.
Besides, you have to say this has been the weirdest year injury wise. Tell me, what team in this league could have survived losing 150+ man-games from their top six defencemen, and still been in the playoffs? Detroit loses Linstrom (Lidstrom) for a few weeks and they go into a tailspin – one defenceman!
Greg, your long years in England getting your PHD were a wonderful restorative that renewed your capability to be optimistic about the Canucks.
🙂
I, on the other hand, have endured 36 long years of mediocrity, interrupted periodically with brief stretches of tantalization. I have earned a certain degree of cynicism.