Standing on Guard for Canada

One by one, each of the Canadian Stanley Cup playoff teams gets knocked out until only one is left. When that happens, millions of Canadian hockey fans embrace that team as their own. Canucks fans in Kelowna, Maple Leafs fans in Halifax, even jilted Jets fans in Winnipeg jump on the bandwagon, hoping this could be the year the Stanley Cup returns to the Great White North.
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So what is it about hockey, and about Canadians, that makes an entire country rally around a team like the Edmonton Oilers?
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With the team down 2-0 and the playoffs' best player out for the duration on a freak injury, it's hard to like the Oilers' chances. But the series is headed back to Edmonton, where Rexall will be full of people ready to shout the anthem from the top of their lungs. Like 32.5 million others, I'll be backing Canada's team. Eh.

This pretty much sums up exactly why I'm cheering for Carolina. Enough of this 'The Cup belongs in Canada' shit, or 'Canada's Team' crap. Canada's team played and lost at the Olympics. Edmonton is playing for Edmonton. If the Oilers somehow miraculously come back and win, the cup parade will be in Edmonton. They won't be raising a banner to the rafters at every Canadian NHL rink, only Rexall Place. Its just nauseating.

Call me a bitter Leafs fan if you want. Say this proves that Leafs fans aren't hockey fans, just Leafs fans. Whatever. I just don't buy into this largely media driven insanity that the Cup winner being in Canada is somehow beneficial to all Canadians.

The only thing that article gets right, and which I think also drives this crap, is the inferiority complex that we Canadians have. I think a large part of what drives people to cling to this 'Cup in Canada' notion is that they somehow think that fans of teams in the US aren't as diehard or don't care as much about their hockey team as Canadians do. That somehow Canadian fans deserve the cup more because they watch more games or make more noise.

Try telling that to all those people at the RBC Centre in Carolina that were cheering so loud that the referees were worried that they might have lost a few seconds because the whistles couldn't be heard. Or tell it to the people in Tampa who were 2nd in attendance all year only to Montreal, despite the fact that most figured that the year away would have dulled people's enthusiasm for the team after their cup win.