Haters Gonna Hate, We Don't Have To (Except For Boston)

There is so much hate out there for the Canucks. Even on Canucks sites the trolls show up in droves with their hateful comments. The song and dance that consumes these haters from other fan bases is monotonously the same, a continuous buzzing whine like a mosquito circling. I'm so used to it that I barely register these cranks anymore. From Embrace The Hate I've moved on to Whatever! As most of us have. I ignore the trolls; never engage them or if I do never at their level. Stay Classy is my motto.

However I do notice when Canucks fans get into a feeding frenzy of negativity and personal attacks. This bothers me to no end. I'm not saying we all have to have the same opinion. That would be an absolute impossibility. What I do want to see is disagreements done with civility, without personal attacks that attempt to mask the insecurities of the attacker. We don't have to hate on each other!

I happen to belong to a closed Facebook Canucks fan page (Rob Sampare's Vancouver Canucks Game Day) that strictly polices a "No Bashing" policy. Don't bash the Home Team, don't bash another member. No goalie politics. Cheer for the team as a team. However it's okay to crank on the Refs, other teams and their players. This page is a safe place to be a fan: no trolls, respect for each other, a community of true fans that discourages band-wagoning. In short, an oasis in the hockey wilderness of fandom.

Now about "Except for the Bruins" - there's not a true Canucks fan that doesn't harbour a potent strain of hate for Boston Bruins. It's not mostly because they beat us in 2011. Every single one of us remembers a Johnny Boychuk hit on Mason Raymond that knocked him down awkwardly along the boards and as he lay on the ice with a broken back the Boston fans (such classy folk!) were chanting: "Flopper, Flopper!" (Hear the chant real loud at the 0:51 mark.) Inexcusable! Unforgiveable and the grounds for a long-standing bitter hatred between the Canucks and the Bruins.

It's quite unlike the fierce and sometimes bitterly contentious rivalry with the Chicago Blackhawks. We Canucks fans, at least most of us, swallowed our dislike and rooted for them as they took on the Big Bad Bruins and handed them a loss in their own barn that did much to assuage our bruised Canucks psyches.

We have plenty of other teams and players (and Refs) to vent our spleen on. We don't have to Hate each other !

Go Canucks!