When Cultures Clash Sports
The Stanley Cup final series, which concluded with Game 7 on Wednesday night was not only a highly charged, sometimes violent clashes between two teams and offensive hockey.
It was also a culture shock between cities on opposite coasts of the continent, and gave surprising results - with some degree of passion as high in Boston and Vancouver, it sometimes seemed threatening.
"Sometimes when you look inside, and you see how the fans react and so on, you say, is it acceptable?" Coach Claude Julien said the Bruins on Wednesday morning. "But at the same time, it is what creates the excitement. "Julien was asked only to compare the sporting cultures in the finals in both cities. The question makes no mention of the misconduct of the fan, but it went Julien with its response.
"As long as it does not cross the line, I really think it's good for both cities," he said.
There was, in fact, any amateur ugly incident in two places for the final. (There is also no guarantee as to what might happen in Vancouver or Boston).
But the level of rhetoric in both cities has been overheated, all series long after Alexandre Burrows, Patrice Bergeron, biting incident Game 1, Aaron Rome in late hit that gave Nathan Horton Game 3 concussion, Johnny Boychuk Tangle of opener -ups that left Mason Raymond with a fractured vertebra, and other incidents involving insults, fights and verbal abuse experienced in a press conference.
"It was an ideal situation for you have much to write," defender Kevin Bieksa said of the Canucks Wednesday. "I'm surprised that there are different issues that circulate in the same place, which is nice and refreshing. There are many story lines, a great motivator for everyone to win this thing."
Boston, toured the grounds for Horton, whose team and the fans took as a kind of fallen hero, the victim served as a common thing. Fans wearing a sweater Bruins Horton was a standard feature of the TD Banknorth Garden video screen.
Across Canada and the United States, personal injury, confirmed the impression that the Canucks were a team dirty.
But when the Canucks' Raymond was injured, Boychuk escaped punishment and suspension, and the Vancouver general manager Mike Gillis complaining loudly about it. Team fans were furious. Because the NHL stop in Rome gave Horton a concussion, they said, and does not interrupt Boychuk for causing the damage, which was at least as bad?
"I'll wear shirt tomorrow Raymond strong and proud," wrote JulieLarson89 on a Web site of the CBC.
The level of passion for Bruins surprised many of the hundreds of fans in Vancouver, who made the trip to Boston. They learn to be independent and also the parish church of Boston sports culture can always be stories of Red Sox fans going to cemeteries after World Series victories spread the word about the long-dead relatives, so that the identification of the hockey players legends or products Beanpot at Boston College, Boston University, Merrimack, Lowell, New Hampshire and other foreign institutions, the Canadian conversation.
At the same time, many of the perceptions of Canada has been changed in this series, including the idea that all Canadians would agree to support the team in Vancouver.
One is the large number of Bruins fans have been found in Nova Scotia. Their support was probably linked to the links between Halifax and Boston, forged in 1917 when Boston sent to the media after the collision triggered an explosion of ammunition ship in the port of Halifax, which killed about 2,000 people. Each year, thanks to the government in Nova Scotia Boston by sending in a large tree that appears in the Boston Common.
But there were many fans of Boston as elsewhere in Canada. Many of Welland, a small industrial town in Ontario between Toronto and Buffalo, was rooting for the Bruins as Horton and Daniel Paille raised here.
Even so, 30 miles to Grimsby, Ontario, the city seemed to drag to Vancouver, as it is here that Bieksa Canucks just - to prove that hockey fandom in Canada can be much more communal and personal than in the U.S. .
On the eve of Game 7, not surprising that the players were calm in the face of all the rhetoric and the passions of the continent which covers the basics of different fans.
"It's about enjoying the day," center Ryan Kesler Canucks said. "Every day, you do not wake up to play in the seventh cut of the game, you know, it's great."
Yes, he was eloquent Bruins Shawn Thornton said fourth liner, but how do you handle pressure?
"Pressure? The pressure is to have five children and no job," he said, smiling. "It's fun."
