What I don't understand is why people care that much in Vancouver. I've been to my share of Oilers games at GM Place and Vancouver fans hate them worse than the Flames—until all of a sudden they make the playoffs?
A friend of mine here who is a life-long Vancouverite, former minor league hockey player and Canucks fan from the very beginning did not root for the Oilers—citing how, when they played the Canucks back in the glory days when the Oilers were winning Cup after Cup and the Canucks were hopeless, they used to run up the score and their stats at the Canucks' expense. That's just bad form.
Canadian team, schmanadian team. They're still a bunch of bums.
I told a friend of mine right before the finals that it looked like '94 all over again. The Canucks were 16th-seeded going into the playoffs and the Rangers were #1. The fact that they made it to a Game 7 was a miracle, but the better team actually did win. The fact that the Rangers were used to playing the crappy ice in the Garden also helped. What did you get this year? The Oilers barely made the playoffs, whereas the Hurricanes were second in their conference. It's admirable how the Oilers scrapped their way to Game 7, but with the game played on the Hurricanes' home ice (warm weather, bouncing pucks and all) it was almost a foregone conclusion.
What bothered me the most is that, now that the hockey season is over, I like to enjoy my baseball. It's usually pretty rare for me to get to see my team on TV here in Vancouver, and one of their games was scheduled on Sportsnet last night. I had been looking forward to this for quite a while. Instead of showing the baseball game, though, they spent three hours pissing and moaning about how the Oilers lost the Cup. Look, I can see 30-45 minutes of that, but to essentially pre-empt an entire baseball game for the cry-fest was just stupid. Maybe I'm the only disappointed baseball fan in the Lower Mainland, but that definitely did not make my night.
So, to be perfectly honest, I don't give a rat's ass about the frickin' Oilers . . . and I think Sportsnet sucks.
