Filibuster Cartoons
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(the above toon is now available as a wallpaper)
The last time the Vancouver Canucks made it to the Stanley Cup finals the year was 1994 and I was 10 years old. When we lost, riots broke out across downtown and I have vivid memories of sitting in my grade six classroom the next day, while Mrs. Kirby, my eccentric Montessori teacher, loudly proclaimed her disappointment in us. Obviously, as children we bore no direct responsibility for the violence and property damage that had unfolded the previous night, yet as the closest available representatives of the “youth of today,” we weren’t about to get off scott-free, either.
17 years later, I keep Mrs. Kirby’s stern words in mind as I watch my city once again teeter on the emotional precipice that comes with being one of the last two remaining teams in hockey’s most coveted tournament. Already on something of a patriotism high from the 2010 winter Olympics, Vancouverites have seamlessly transitioned into all-out Canucks mania, with everyone who’s anyone in the city — if not the province — expected to make some token loyalty gesture.
As a cartoonist, it was obviously most logical for me to draw one of these vicious cartoons that you’re seeing plastered on every Vancouver bar window and Facebook profile these days, a crude caricature depicting a heroic “Johnny Canuck” figure towering over the bloodied corpses of the previous teams we’ve felled: the Chicago Blackhawks, Nashville Predators, and San Jose Sharks. (We Vancouver cartoonists are very lucky that our team faced such easily anthropomorphisized opponents. Our rivals in the finals, the Boston Bruins, have battled far more amorphously-named rivals: the Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Philadelphia Flyers.)
Though I want to see my team triumph in the finals, I am personally not a huge hockey fan, so I can’t really offer too much stunning analysis. As you might expect, I’ve been most interested in following the “politics” of our success, so to speak, which there has been a fair amount of.
Canada’s credentials as the world’s top hockey nation are obviously quite impeachable, yet an awkward asterisk on this reputation has been the fact that no Canadian team has actually won the Stanley Cup — a made-in-Canada trophy named after Canada’s eighth governor-general — since the 1993 victory of the Montreal Canadians over the Los Angeles Kings. This “lost decade” has helped generate an ample flow of anti-American attitudes into Canadian hockey culture, as fans frequently resent American teams for even existing, let alone winning a cup they supposedly don’t even appreciate.
The New York-born commissioner of the National Hockey League, Gary Bettman, has become a particular boogeyman to partisans of this type: in his two decades as boss, Bettman has become synonymous with the expansion of professional hockey into the United States, promoting the formation of new teams like the Phoenix Coyotes and Dallas Stars in so-called “non-traditional” markets where interest in the sport has been historically low. If one subscribes to a particular theory that hockey can only be properly enjoyed by people who live in a cold climate, this sort of expansion seems absurd and self-destructive. Useless teams will lose the league money and gobble up valuable resources — including Canadian players — all in an effort to further enrich fat American plutocrats at the expense of the proudest totem of Canadian culture.
But even then, anti-Americanism only goes so far. There are folks back east who seem to even think that Vancouver’s team, founded in 1971, is still something of a flash-in-the-pan newcomer, and not even a true “Canadian team” in the way that, say, Montreal and Toronto’s are. An amazing amount of newspaper ink and message board threads have been devoted to settling this absurd debate, culminating in a hopefully definitive Angus-Reid poll declaring that in the eyes of 70% of the country, yes, the Canucks are indeed Canadian enough to deserve nation-wide support.
But what are your thoughts? Do you follow hockey? Will you be supporting the Canucks? Or is perhaps your team lying somewhere in the pile of corpses…
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:26 am
Oh JJ. It was the Nashville Predators (which you drew), not the Minnesota Wild. And to hell with the rest of Canada – the only support I care for is Cascadian.
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:28 am
Heh. Ottawa’s my team, but I’ll cheer for any Canadian team. Well, except for Toronto. Lousy bums.
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:45 am
Well, I simply loathe the Boston Bruins for existing and always have since I was a kid. So you know who I'll be rooting for.
June 3rd, 2011 at 12:31 pm
As a Bostonian, I am proud that my team is in the finals. Other than that, I don't really care.
GO BRUINS!
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:08 pm
The last time I followed a sport on ice was when I watched curling during the Winter Olympics last year.
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Note: "last year". Not 2011 like JJ said. :)
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:15 pm
I've never understood the obsession with watching sports, hockey included. Gruesome and pointless.
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:50 pm
There are TWO teams with sabre-tooth tiger mascots? What a time to be alive!
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:02 pm
I'm from San Jose. Yes, I'm still mad, but I'll take Vancouver over Boston.
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Oh, and by the way, I agree with your post wholeheartedly. My whole family lives and breathes hockey, and we live in the middle of sunny-California.
June 3rd, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Since Im from Boston I would love to see the Bruins win, but only because it would complete all Boston based teams winning a championship in the last 11 years
other than that Im not even a hockey fan and don't generally like it :P
June 3rd, 2011 at 6:25 pm
I can't get into any game where the players are supposed to hurt each other.
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:21 pm
I’m rooting for Boston. Considering Vancouver needed 59:42 to win game 1 in what was expected to be a blow out this will be a very interesting series.
My only worry is will a Bruins victory lead to an explosion of “pink hats.”
June 3rd, 2011 at 8:43 pm
haha, I love your Habitant. :-)
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:51 pm
JJ, I love you, but since I'm Boston born-and-bred… GO BRUINS!
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Furthermore, Boston is one of the four American Original Six teams and have long been part of NHL history and have long had a history of great Canadian players, especially none greater than Bobby Orr, whose tenure on the Bruins helped to usher in the modern era of the NHL… But I'll agree. Hockey does not belong in the Southern US… just look at Atlanta… they just lost their franchise to Winnipeg… and that's the second time! The first being loosing the flames to Calgary.
June 4th, 2011 at 5:46 am
Patrick, I'm going to disagree with that blanket statement of yours. Hockey most certainly is working in Tampa Bay, in Carolina, in Dallas, in LA, in San Jose, in Nashville….hockey works where the ownership and management puts in the time and effort to make it work. Those efforts were not put forth by the Atlanta Spirit Group. I think Atlanta could have worked if they hadn't run the team into the ground. It wasn't long ago that they were playing to near-capacity crowds.
Teams like Nashville face the same issues Winnipeg did in the 90s…a lack of corporate partnerships has had them in financial straits, despite their attendance being pretty solid. It wasn't long ago that Chicago had the 2nd worst attendance in the league. In 06-07, Boston had worse attendance than the Thrashers by a margin of 1500, worse than Nashville, and even Phoenix. Clearly, people were going to games in these southern cities at a respectable rate until the team began to fall apart. When teams are new, they lack the diehard fans that teams like Boston have, who have followed the team for decades. There's a lack of hockey culture that's been implemented in full, so it's best to do what you can to nurse that culture. That's why California teams and Dallas are so successful(despite Dallas' ownership's poor financial situation) regarding fanbase. They helped hockey grow in their communities. They built rinks, promoted youth hockey programs, growing hockey from the ground up so that the long term situation will be stable. Atlanta didn't have this from ASG, so when the team started to falter, there wasn't a life-raft to keep it afloat.
I keep telling some of my fellow Canadians that if the Canadian dollar drops back to where it used to be, the Canadian clubs will be in a very bad situation again, and barring the ownership being fine with absorbing millions of dollars in losses per year, they'll be forced to seek out options that some of the American teams currently are due to the sagging greenback and the weak economy.
Hockey belongs in the south just as much as it does in the north. It's an excellent sport, and I know people in the southern US can love the game just as much as anyone else. My brother is Canadian as well, but he loves football and baseball. Toronto Blue Jays are having huge attendance issues, they struggle to attract big name players, they haven't made the playoffs in a long time. Does baseball belong in Canada? Is my brother any less of a fan than Americans? No. He is a fanatic fan of the New England Patriots, has been since the mid-90s. He follows the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox and shouts down any Yankee fan he sees at games :P
So yeah, sports don't need to be, and shouldn't be, region specific. Winnipeg lost its team once. So did Ottawa. So did Quebec. So did Hartford. I think hockey can flourish in all those markets, but I don't see why people assume it should come at the expense of the south. Anywho, I've ranted long enough. I was born in Alberta, raised in Ontario, and I follow the Sharks first and foremost, followed by the Oilers very close behind. I've followed hockey all my life, basically, and I know some people from San Jose who know more about the intricacies of hockey than I do. Not from a lack of effort on my part, but because they love the game.
June 4th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
From what I understand, actually, some Canadian baseball fans get a lot of crap for enjoying the sport, which is considered by some to be an American intrusion.
June 4th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Huh. I always thought "Canuck" was a pejorative.
June 5th, 2011 at 11:04 am
I guess it would depend what area of the country you're in. Southern Ontario tends to love baseball, lots of Jays and Detroit Tigers fans and some minor league teams. Baseball has actually had a fairly parallel development in Canada in the same way as football did. For example, a park in London, ON (tenuously, imho) claims to be the oldest baseball diamond still standing, and a lot of kids play little league.
Most people who like baseball get crap for liking the sport because it's perceived as boring, etc., same reasons people probably get made fun of in the USA.
June 5th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Maybe hockey isn't a big enough around here to even think of putting it on cartoonishly fake money, but it's still very enjoyable. There's certainly plenty of support around Nashville, at least; it's not uncommon for all the seats to be sold out, the people are supportive.
June 5th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
I am a Toronto fan who likes the Penguins and hates the Craps…I mean Caps, and I live in Washington D.C! I will say I am going for the Canucks in reason I hate the Bruins. I wanted the Pens to win…but oh well…can't have everything. At least I can still call them the No Cup at Alls and make my friends mad. :-p
June 7th, 2011 at 8:58 am
They're not supposed to hurt each other. The game is a contact sport, so when you have teams of professionals, they're going to play the game really hard. Just look at the baseball game between the Giants and the Marlins in which Buster Posey got run into by Scot Cousins. There was this big brouhaha about how the game's rules were too permissive violent, but at the end of the day the general agreement was that it was a clean play, and that Buster Posey knew what he was getting into by becoming a professional baseball player.
My whole family plays hockey compulsively, and none of us have lost teeth, or have been injured in any way.
June 8th, 2011 at 10:02 am
Interesting. I thought hockey united our countries instead of dividing them. I would never have dreamed that there would ever be a statement made about "resources" such as Canadian players being wasted on professional teams that might not be as successful as others. Yikes. I have to say, I don't quite understand, and I am saddened by the resentment and insecurity embodied in this post. Hockey is an international ambassador and a point of pride and excellence for the Canadian culture, no matter which country the teams are formed and the games are played. Why in the world would Canadians be upset that the sport that their country is best known for has spent decades spreading across the US, when ultimately that does benefit the reputation of the country and it's people (not to mention the pocketbooks of the players). It seems a small-minded issue that anyone other than a Canadian is heading the league, or benefitting from that growth in tandem with the country and it's players? I think Canada should be thrilled and proud that the sport and their sons that play it are loved in both countries.
There is a place where everyone on the team is just from one nation — it is called the Olympics. :) Great job, Canada! We all love hockey. In that love, both countries are one. There is not one soul in either country or around the world who would dispute that Canadians are the best hockey players on the planet. Why waste your time and energy being resentful (or spreading resentment) because other countries love it, too, are bringing your sport to millions more fans, and doing a pretty good job of playing the game?
June 9th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Teams like Nashville face the same issues Winnipeg did in the 90s…a lack of corporate partnerships has had them in financial straits, despite their attendance being pretty solid. It wasn't long ago that Chicago had the 2nd worst attendance in the league. In 06-07, Boston had worse attendance than the Thrashers by a margin of 1500, worse than Nashville, and even Phoenix. Clearly, people were going to games in these southern cities at a respectable rate until the team began to fall apart. When teams are new, they lack the diehard fans that teams like Boston have, who have followed the team for decades. There's a lack of hockey culture that's been implemented in full, so it's best to do what you can to nurse that culture. That's why California teams and Dallas are so successful(despite Dallas' ownership's poor financial situation) regarding fanbase. They helped hockey grow in their communities. They built rinks, promoted youth hockey programs, growing hockey from the ground up so that the long term situation will be stable. Atlanta didn't have this from ASG, so when the team started to falter, there wasn't a life-raft to keep it afloat.
+1
June 16th, 2011 at 8:57 am
Looks like you shouldn't have poked the bear, it wrecked your city
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