December 1st, 2006

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Canucks, Sports, Vancouver
5 Comments »

The Wisdom of Hockey Crowds?

Last night James and I (using tickets he bought from Jen) watched the Canucks lose 2-1 to the mighty Anaheim Ducks. The home team actually played pretty well–it just happens that the Ducks looked more like stick-wielding pterodactyls. Is it too early to predict an Anaheim-Buffalo final?

As hockey watchers may know, Anaheim defenceman Chris Pronger requested a trade from Edmonton over this past summer. The rumoured reasons for Pronger’s request are possibly sordid–you can read about them yourself if you like.

On Tuesday, Pronger played his first game for the Ducks back in, uh, the ‘City of Champions’. Predictably, he was mercilessly booed and the fans had some viscious and descriptive signs for him. Some fans even came to the arena for the practice with signs. Do they really not have anything better to do than harass the guy at practice?

Regardless, Pronger was obviously playing for the Ducks last night in Vancouver. And you know what? Idiotic Canucks fans were booing him here as well.

This struck me as pretty absurd. Here’s a stand-out Canadian player who’s played a ton for the national team. He’s traded away from one of the Canucks’ divisional rivals (and beat them on Tuesday night), making them a worse team. And Canucks fans are booing him?

Speaking of booing, why do people boo during penalty shots? Surely the noise affects the goaltender as much as the shooter.

Comments: 5 Responses so far

alexis
December 1st, 2006
10:21 am

Do you go to hockey games often? I’ve never been to an actual professional sporting event and would like to go to one at some point.

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Beth
December 1st, 2006
12:36 pm

Alexis - you should definitely go to a live hockey game — it really is a very interesting subculture unto itself. The last Canuck game I went to some fans go into a fight in the stadium after the game… I didn’t see the actual fight, but one guy had a huge gash along his neck (with copious amounts of blood flowing out of it) and I distinctly heard the words, “Don’t touch my girlfriend!” Wisdom of hockey crowds indeed.

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Chris
December 1st, 2006
2:57 pm

To quote a shirt I once had: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

Seriously, do you even need to question the mentality of a large mob of drunken sports fans?

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Metro
December 2nd, 2006
10:41 am

No-one should be booing during a hockey game, except perhaps at really dirty play.

You sometimes hear people booing the national anthems, which is just outright stupid. Doubtless these morons boo the sunrise, too.

But sometimes it gets really ugly. The night Bertuzzi laid out Steve Moore the Canucks fans were getting rabid, booing everything. No-one could please them.

Until Bert mugged Moore. Then there was some cheering. When Moore–who was quite clearly badly injured–didn’t get up, I heard more cheers.

Some of these audiences have watched too much reality TV and think that’s actually the way civilized people behave in the real world.

I’ll stick to minor league play. Where money isn’t quite yet everything and the audience tends to be about 85% civil.

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andrew
December 3rd, 2006
1:48 pm

Unfortunately many Canuck games are attended by ignorant fans who more likely received the ticket from a client or a vendor than purchased the ticket because they really love hockey.

I find that compared to other Canadian hockey fans, Vancouver fans know less about hockey and have poor hockey manners.

Who goes to a hockey game and gets into a fight?

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