Mediacheck

Pssst. A Lot of People Hate the Canucks

Local media doesn't dwell on why, but outside the home town no one holds back.

By Steve Burgess, 18 Nov 2011, TheTyee.ca

Canucks fan

Not this guy, certainly, but plenty others love to hate the Canucks. How come? Photo by kwazy from Your BC: The Tyee Photo Pool.

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Don Cherry is a blowhard. He's a loudmouth, a fool, a professional yahoo. So it hurts when you rely on Cherry to tell you the truth. "Stop whining," he told the Vancouver Canucks on the Oct. 29 edition of Coach's Corner. "Why does everyone hate Vancouver?"

Why does everyone hate Vancouver? There are surely Canucks fans blissfully unaware that everyone did. But safe to say that by now most locals who are paying attention have heard some of that talk. It was common during last spring's Stanley Cup run and persists today -- the perception that this edition of the Canucks has taken over from the Leafs as Canada's Most Hated. It's just that we don't generally hear it from our hometown writers and broadcasters. It has ever been thus -- to get the truth about your local sports heroes, you must listen to the out-of-towners.

There are plenty of good reasons to hate the Canucks. Non-fans can hate them for the ridiculous amount of attention they garner from local media and their millions of supporters. As a fan you can hate them for their endlessly frustrating history. And personally, I hate that I love them so. I cannot justify to myself or anyone else the giant chunks of my life that disappear down the sinkhole of Canuck love. I hate that.

That kind of hate is our own business, though. The Canucks are our team. Nobody really knows what goes on inside an intimate relationship. It's different when you hear that strangers hate them. Them's glove-dropping words.

Tell us, we can take it

All the same, as fans we want to hear the straight goods about the Canucks from trusted scribes and broadcasters. That's why it's annoying that we have to wait for outsiders, like a TSN or Satellite Hot Stove panel, to hear honest assessments of Canucks players. It may not be a surprise to learn that Alex Burrows and Max Lapierre are battling for last in the Mr. Congeniality race. But isn't that part of the sports story? And more importantly, if there are legitimate issues involving team chemistry, should they not be getting more ink in this NHL-obsessed market?

Covering a sports team is about maintaining relationships -- with players and with management. Call out a player too harshly and good luck getting a post-game quote from him or his buddies next time. Alienating owners and management can be even worse.

Mike Halford of NBC Sports doesn't have to worry about keeping fences mended. So he can write, as he did this week: "Vancouver is the NHL's most despised team -- by a longshot."

Halford was reporting on recent radio comments by retired Bruins forward Mark Recchi that the Canucks were the most arrogant team he'd played against in his 22 year career. He took Recchi's remarks with a grain of salt. But he did report on them.

It does happen that local writers get on the wrong side of the Canucks. Province columnist Tony Gallagher was famously at odds with former Canucks GM Brian Burke, who refused to speak with him. For a reporter that could be a death knell, although a columnist like Gallagher can still opine without direct access.

But NHL teams own their own broadcast rights, and so members of the TV broadcast team are de facto team employees. You are not going to hear much straight talk from that quarter. Sportsnet Pacific team John Shorthouse and John Garrett are a pleasure to listen to, but that doesn't mean you're going to tune in for the straight goods on whose ass needs to be kicked or which player is widely disliked.

Booing Lu

Roberto Luongo is a different story -- he falls into a category all his own. He's been poked and prodded and dissected like a dead frog in a high school lab. With all the head shrinking Lou's been subjected to, it's no wonder he needed that new mask this year. They might as well have swapped it for a portable MRI.

But even the much-maligned Luongo can count on the discretion of the broadcast team. When goalie Corey Schneider let in some weak goals during Wednesday night's debacle vs. Chicago, virtually every fan watching must have been thinking Luongo's best games are the ones he spends on the bench. Would Shorthouse or Garrett ever make a remark like that? Only if they were struck by sudden-onset Tourette's. And when Luongo let in a soft blueline blooper during the previous Canucks-Blackhawks game Nov. 6, Shorthouse and Garrett danced around the subject like Herman Cain discussing his love life.

And as much as Luongo has been scrutinized in this market, the out-of-town chorus can still be more brutally direct. Just before Game Seven last June, Gerry Callahan of the Boston Herald wrote this about the Canucks' mega-bucks goalie:

"If he were a criminal defendant, he would be declared unfit to stand trial and sent to the nervous hospital for evaluation. If he sat next to you on a flight, you'd pretend to sleep until the pilot announced your initial descent. You wouldn't even think about wrestling him for the armrest. If he bought the house next door, you'd move. He looks like Sacha Baron Cohen, but carries himself more like a recent Mel Gibson character -- specifically, the one who talks to his beaver puppet."

Callahan went on, gleefully, to predict almost certain victory for the Bruins simply because the Canucks had a head case between the pipes and the Bruins had someone sane, with a pulse rate that was not escalating like the national debt.

I recall the sinking feeling I got while reading Callahan's diatribe. Because, vicious though the column was, it had the clear ring of truth. I felt as though I was visiting a brutally honest fortuneteller. The Canucks were doomed. It was all over but the rioting.

As a fan, I am endlessly curious about my team. And as I watch the Canucks flounder this season I would sincerely like to know if there are in fact psychological issues that hinder them. I understand that local reporters must take care not to antagonize the men who represent their livelihoods. But it's the fans who pay everyone's meal ticket. Give it to us straight. [Tyee]

Steve Burgess writes about film and culture every other week on The Tyee. Find his previous stories here.

21 Comments:

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  • worried

    27 weeks ago

    canucks

    I hate them because the day after the riots not one of them came down to help clean up, and the next day they took their golf clubs and headed to California and never once have offered to help pay for the millions in damages caused by their fans. The owners made millions extra last season by all the extra games.

  • Van Isle

    27 weeks ago

    Just listen to all the

    Just listen to all the talking heads on Vancouver radio and television stations. Just mention the Canucks and they get all giddy. Last Spring during the play-offs; it got so bad I would turn off the TV or radio. I swear, when Bill Good or Rick Cluff mentioned the Canucks they would [OFFENSIVE CHARACTERIZATION REMOVED. -MODERATOR.].

  • hg

    27 weeks ago

    Hated Canucks

    Last season they were hated by the other teams because they were the best team in the league.
    They were beaten by the Blackhawks with foul play and the help of the referees.
    Perhaps one should ask how much of the riot was caused by the frustration with the refereeing.

  • cboo44

    27 weeks ago

    Hate Canucks?

    Who cares? ALL of Canada hates the Maple Laughs, EVEN the entire population of Onterrible !!!

    "They were beaten by the Blackhawks with foul play and the help of the referees."
    THAT would have been the Bruins, recognized 2 years running as the dirtiest team in the NHL.
    The riot was "caused" by those who used the play off to become lawless. Aided and abetted by Mayor Moonbeam, who invited them all downtown to get S-faced and by reducing police presence so that the drunken idiots wouldn't be "intimidated".

  • deeby

    27 weeks ago

    Ballard or one of the D....

    ...showed up the next day to help clean up. He was told politely to not bother. Read that on Twitter from someone who was down there.

  • deeby

    27 weeks ago

    Hatred transferred from the Leafs

    The Pat Quinn-era Leafs were the most hated in the late '90s.

    It seemed to be due to a combination of the players' constant whining about officiating, and the fans' sense of entitlement, predicting a cup win at any moment.

    Add a dash of legitimate success within their conference, a big, visible TV market, and voila....

    Sound familiar?

  • Frank

    27 weeks ago

    No riot on for this year

    I'm not even sure we'll make the playoffs.

    All I care about at this point is that Boston, Chicago and the two Alberta teams do just as bad.

  • Snowrunner

    27 weeks ago

    Hate the Canucks?

    That would actually mean I care about the stupidity that is the NHL. I don't.

    As far as I cam concerned the entire NHL can jump into the Pacific or Atlantic and drown. I wouldn't shed a tear.

  • monty

    27 weeks ago

    Who?

    An individual who is unable to maintain eye contact with anyone, whose eyes dart back and forth like a pendumlum, whose slicked back hair
    resembles the boys out of Chicago, who fails to show up for practice but plays poker late at night in some casino, bears some closer scrutiny. Any suyggestions? Or volunteers?

  • Mustafarian

    27 weeks ago

    Psst: a lot of people don't hate the Canucks

    Psst: a lot of people don't hate the Canucks, they just don't give a rat's behind about them.

    What many people do hate though is the massive amount of free publicity and other perks the Canucks are given, by local media and local governments. The Canucks are a private, for profit entertainment venture. No other show in town is given such lavish subsidies, or corporate welfare. It's a disgusting waste of resources that are badly needed elsewhere. Add to that the cost of the riots - themselves a byproduct of the grotesque mega-hype that is heaped on a bunch of super-rich, good for nothing thugs and their traveling circus.

  • bontano

    27 weeks ago

    Yawn

    I don't have the Canucks. I just have no more interest in them than I have in any other beer commercial.

    That doesn't mean I don't have any resentments related to them. For instant, I resent that there are so many otherwise intelligent (presumably) grown men, like Steve Burgess, perhaps, who claim to "love" them. Love your kids, love your partner, love humanity, love the way the sun glints off of the ocean at sunset, but love a corporate product? You may as well shout out to the world that you love the Royal Bank. I know, I know, it's about the game, about the glowing hearts that stir from the pumping of hockey-infused Canadian blood, yada yada. So where are the community arenas where kids are playing hockey not full of grown men expressing their love? Perhaps because they're too busy drinking the Kool Aid brewed up my major media, the chamber of commerce, and the beer companies. Canucks, Leafs, Ducks, Rangers, it doesn't matter. It's all the same corporate swill. If you like hockey, go ahead and watch it, play it, rub your self up against your Gretzky poster if you like. Just shut up about it already. And how much is Canucks, Inc." paying TransLink to put "Go Canucks Go" on every bus in town? Not a penny I'll bet. Why don't we give that space to small businesses if we're going to give it away (instead of just to one big business)?

  • Dan the socialist

    26 weeks ago

    The Canucks are too corporate

    The Canucks are too corporate for my likes. They never really been a good team either. They have had good players and cool players like Snepts, Williams, Smyl, Gary Smith etc

    But the whole NHL last 5-6 years has turned me off. The 60', 70's, and early 80's it was better. It changed in latter part of the 80's with too much expansion and resulting in many players that would never of made it 30 years ago into the league and then the mass European invasion. The league is sucky.

    The crack down on fighting and using the small ice (should be Olympic size especially since NHL wants to show skill) just turns me off.

    I still go and support the Surrey Eagles and Vancouver Giants by going to their games. I find jr. Hockey more enjoyable.

  • hg

    26 weeks ago

    Hate Canucks

    Yeah well, I have give up watching hockey, just like I have given up WWF wrestling.

  • alive

    26 weeks ago

    some heroes!

    At least when you watch wrestling, you know it is showbusiness--- the Canucks actually act as if they are a team, while in fact is is all about hero-worship and blaming whoever is too high on drugs to do his job.

  • Steve Burgess

    26 weeks ago

    Bontano

    I will start loving my kids when you show me a conclusive DNA test and not a moment before.

    And yes, I admit it--I love to see Corporate Hank pass to Danny Multinational who shoots the red herring behind the Straw Man set up by Big Media. Then I thrill to see the skating oligarchs celebrate the fact that they have gulled the masses into making them part of the 1 percent.

    It's either that or a nice game of Monopoly.

  • Frank

    26 weeks ago

    Hate?

    I don't care if the Canucks are owned by a consortium consisting of Campbell, Harper and Bush, they're still the team I love.

  • Tbarnston

    26 weeks ago

    I hate them

    They played like a bunch of wankers last playoffs. They couldn't walk the walk, plain and simple. Whenever adversity arose in a game, they retreated and watched the clock. How many 8-1 blowouts can fans be expected to tolerate!

    Watching the Canucks is like watching a Texas hold em match. Instead of hard nosed hockey, it is cold, calculated throttling of their energy output and will to win depending on how they assess the strength of the opponent and statistical need to win.

    I have watched the Canucks my entire life, lived and died by 1994, and was absolutely disgusted by how they played in last year's cup run. A bunch of wankers I say!

  • mcwar52

    26 weeks ago

    We're All Losers Now?

    All the fuss about the Canucks bores me, but just after the second game of the finals last year I saw a car with a great stencilled banner on it which read "We are all Canucks now". Apart from feeling that adopting that particular slogan was in poor taste, my main reaction was, "What? We're all losers now? Speak for yourself."

  • AHHA

    26 weeks ago

    Choke artists

    After 22 years of lovin' life in BC I say...
    Go Jets Go!

  • canada eh

    26 weeks ago

    Worried

    "I hate them because the day after the riots not one of them came down to help clean up, and the next day they took their golf clubs and headed to California and never once have offered to help pay for the millions in damages caused by their fans"

    And why should they offer to pay? They weren't down there destroying the city like morons, a couple players actually did go down and offer to help but were told to go home. The fact that every single Vancouver fan feels as though he or she knows the game better than the players or coaches is one of the main reasons that the Canucks get so much hate from out-of-towners. The fans are nuts! And not in a good way. Back off on the criticism and stop throwing Luongo to the dogs every time he lets in a goal. He has the single toughest job in the game and having everyone jump on his back after every goal does not help his confidence. He's still human

    If they fans want a championship so bad, leave the criticism to the people who get paid to coach and play and SHUT UP!

  • Fii

    26 weeks ago

    Funny posts. I am part of the

    Funny posts. I am part of the crowd who couldn't care less... but this thread was fine reading.

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