Rite of Spring 2019: The Chase for the Stanley Cup

[Red Wolf]

4 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

All this lamenting of the Bruins winning the Cup when the conference finals haven't even started yet... I dunno, seems a bit premature.

 

Especially when there are plenty of people on here ready to bitch and moan at least as much if the Hurricanes make it through.

[MDGP]

2 hours ago, AustinFomBoston said:

I get how it's super easy to hate Boston, yeah we're pretty arrogant & unlikable (But to be fair, any city would be that way with the success Boston teams have had). All you can really do is accept it and enjoy the ride. Only thing I've ever really complained about is Super Bowl XLII, If it wasn't for the whole "Perfect season" thing & the divine intervention helmet catch, I could accept it like all the other losses. 

 

Some of my favorite match ups are when the they play teams that haven't had much success. Like the Dodgers, Canucks, Eagles, etc. I can be happy either way. If Boston, it's awesome, if they lose, sure it's disappointing, but at least it's to a team that hasn't made it to the top before. Good for them. 

 

Yeah, the bolded part is the best way to look at it. In the end, people getting annoyed at Boston sports and fans is from an entirely natural place of jealousy, just as our hatred for the Yankees for so many years was based in jealousy of their success; It's not a personal thing generally at all. In the same vein, it's perfectly reasonable to embrace the hate while not being an arrogant ass ourselves. Personally, am I going to complain about the Bruins every chance I get? Sure. Am I unreasonably annoyed when our best players play terribly, Absolutely. Do I pretty much constantly lament Chiarelli being a horrible GM and basically destroying any chance of a dynasty with his post 2011 moves? You're goddamn right I do. 

 

Those are all pretty normal fan reactions, but it's also important to recognize that it's going to annoy fans of other teams because they'd be glad to be constantly being annoyed by a team that isn't entirely frustrating some of the times. 

 

 

I do also think that an outside perspective can come across as unfair, particularly to Bruins fans like Speedy who aren't fans of the other teams. The Bruins are and have for pretty much three decades been the red headed step-child of Boston. The Patriots are the model of success, the Celtics are the winningest franchise in the NBA, and even when the Sox sucked, Boston's a baseball town at heart. Ultimately the Bruins have historically gotten pushed to the back for a considerable amount of its history. 

 

It's completely understandable that the views of Boston arrogance for someone like Speedy, whose teams truly haven't been that noteworthy in the scheme of things, and someone like me, who is mathematically the luckiest sports fan who has ever lived, are different. From a Bruins only perspective, it's really NOT that much different from a lot of other teams, especially since 1990. And honestly even though the Bruins' won pretty recently, the championship is treated as sort of a fluke by some of the more arrogant Boston fans because that history of success isn't truly there in the same way it is for the others.  

[IceCap]

8 minutes ago, Lafarge said:

And honestly even though the Bruins' won pretty recently, the championship is treated as sort of a fluke by some of the more arrogant Boston fans because that history of success isn't truly there in the same way it is for the others.  

Again, I’d love to “only” have one Leafs Cup in the past ten years. 

“We don’t have the history of success” just comes off as arrogant compared to other fanbases. 

[speedy]

This is slowly delving into Politics-level bashing your head against a wall.

[Brass]

I think if the Boston fans here haven't proven that we're reasonable fans enough, then no wall of text can do it. Let's just all go back to enjoying playoff hockey.

[MDGP]

Just now, Brass said:

I think if the Boston fans here haven't proven that we're reasonable fans enough, then no wall of text can do it. Let's just all go back to enjoying playoff hockey.

 

True. I'll be going back to my Scott Walker night-terrors now.

[IceCap]

1 hour ago, speedy said:

That’s the one thing you fixated on huh. My point was it wasn’t always peaches and cream before 2011, that’s it. No bitching, just painting a picture for everyone on this board who has a hard on for hating everything Boston. I don’t care that Ray Bourque got traded 20 years later, but from 2001-2011 it sure wasn’t the greatest feeling.

Yeah but that’s the thing...that Cup mitigates all the crap significantly. I promise you I’ll stop bitching about the Leafs losing three game sevens to the Bruins should they ever win the Cup. Why? Winning means all that bs is in the past. It becomes part of the journey and should make seeing your team win it all sweeter. 

 

So going on about how rough it was to see Ray Bourque win it all with Colorado isn’t going to go over well when the Bruins have won since then. In the past ten years at that. 

 

1 hour ago, speedy said:

Of course every team has dealt with that one way or another, but we seem to be the only people who can never mention it without people going bananas. 

I know you’re not a Celtics, Red Sox, or Pats fan but to steal a bit from my BASS cohost Still MIGHTY? These things don’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t separate the annoyance with the Pats’ two decades worth of dominance and expect it not to rub off on the Bruins less than that but still very much there success. 

 

1 hour ago, speedy said:

I don’t know how this turned into this, but I never said we’re hard pressed and I never said anything about suffering after the Cup. I simply tried to show that Bruins fans had plenty of suffering before hitting the jackpot. 

I get that. But to fans of teams who have never won the Cup/are on long droughts (yo)? That’s gonna come off as annoying. 

Add in the bleedover annoyance from the rest of the Boston spots scene? And stuff like this is going to happen. 

 

I admit. I don’t like hearing it. I’d trade for the Leafs to have the past twenty years the Bruins have had in a heartbeat.

 

At the end of the day? It’s about perspective. The Bruins have had it far better than a good portion of the league. 

[IceCap]

18 minutes ago, Brass said:

I think if the Boston fans here haven't proven that we're reasonable fans enough, then no wall of text can do it. Let's just all go back to enjoying playoff hockey.

*shrug*

 

You, speedy, and a fair number of other Boston fans here are good dudes and certainly not pricks. 

 

Will I ever *like* the Bruins though? Nah. Will their success ever be something I root for? Nah. Will I ever feel bad for them re: any past or future failures? Nah. 

And I can’t see how you’d expect me to think anything else on the matter. 

[Kramerica Industries]

5 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

You can’t separate the annoyance with the Pats’ two decades worth of dominance and expect it not to rub off on the Bruins less than that but still very much there success. 

 

Add in four Red Sox championships in the last 15 years for good measure as well. The Bruins and Celtics only having one championship each since the '80s and '70s is, comparatively, light success, of course, but the baseball and football teams more than offset that. 

[Brass]

11 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

And I can’t see how you’d expect me to think anything else on the matter. 

 

I don't at all, and especially as a Leafs fan, I don't expect you to root for the Bruins success. I also appreciate your kind words. Thank you.

 

I think at the core of things, we're all sports fans here. If our team doesn't succeed, we're going to talk about it. It's what sports fans do. It's what humans do; we focus on the negatives far more than the positives. I liken Boston sports fans complaining about their teams performances to someone from Florida complaining to a someone in Cleveland about having a day of bad weather.

[speedy]

23 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

Yeah but that’s the thing...that Cup mitigates all the crap significantly. I promise you I’ll stop bitching about the Leafs losing three game sevens to the Bruins should they ever win the Cup. Why? Winning means all that bs is in the past. It becomes part of the journey and should make seeing your team win it all sweeter. 

 

So going on about how rough it was to see Ray Bourque win it all with Colorado isn’t going to go over well when the Bruins have won since then. In the past ten years at that. 

Going on!? It was ONE of many examples of what being a Bruins fan WAS pre-Cup win. I went on to say in a later post that kind of stuff doesn’t matter now. 

[IceCap]

1 minute ago, speedy said:

Going on!? It was ONE of many examples of what being a Bruins fan WAS pre-Cup win. I went on to say in a later post that kind of stuff doesn’t matter now. 

I get that, and my apologies if I made it seem like it wasn’t. 

I’m just explaining the reasoning as to why that one line got the reaction it did. 

[habsfan1]

Go Sharks.

 

2-0 SJ late in the 1st. Please don't blow it.

[DTConcepts]

If a player isn’t involved in the play, and is going for a change, it shouldn’t be offsides. That Avs call is bulls***.

[Kramerica Industries]

Christ, clean this loophole up. Lazy change, sure, but having goals erased from things with zero impact on the play is just so ridiculous.

 

The NHL instituted offside challenge review because of one blatant mistake six years ago - oddly enough, benefiting the Avs, so Matt Duchene haunts the Avs from beyond his Colorado grave - and in the four seasons now that we've had it, the league has refused to fix ANY of the unintended consequences that were caused by it. 

 

Garbage league. 

[Wings]

I kind of understand the sort of hate for the Sharks. Always blowing it in the playoffs and declaring their fans the best in hockey rubbed many the wrong way. 

[FiddySicks]

4-3 Avs. Just watch. 

[DTConcepts]

3 minutes ago, Bucfan56 said:

4-3 Avs. Just watch. 

 

You better be a time traveler.

[habsfan1]

5 minutes ago, Bucfan56 said:

4-3 Avs. Just watch. 

 

I thought the Sharks were gonna choke by blowing their biggest comeback ever against Vegas in that game.

 

They proved me wrong. Let's see how long they can keep it up...

[FiddySicks]

Blues in 4.