Yeah, nothing wrong with recognizing that the city has a rich hockey history that includes Stanley Cups. No Sens fan I've ever known or spoken to takes ownership of those cups personally, in a way that 20 year old Habs fans would take ownership of some old Howie Morenz-led Cup champs team. Nobody is rocking Cy Denneny or King Clancy or Frank Nighbor jerseys in Ottawa.
I like the fact that we have the old cup banners - not in an attempt to keep count with the Habs or Leafs or anything, but it celebrate's the city's history with the game. We've been a very hockey-relevant city, historically, for over a century... why not embrace it?
If we weren't geographically smack-dab in the middle of the two oldest and most celebrated hockey franchises in the world, no one would have a problem with it. If Seattle gets a team in the next few years and hang some old Seattle Metropolitans banners (one Cup win, one Cup loss, and 5 PCHA championships), with their unique old striping, I bet the rest of the league would think it's cool, but that would be OK because Seattle is a non-traditional hockey market (by hockey-snob standards, at least - it clearly has a rich hockey history, but without an NHL team, it is relegated to being a quaint little eccentricity of the hockey world by many). But with our proximity to Montreal and Toronto, we get flack because people think we're trying to "keep score" out of a sense of rivalry and pettiness rather than just celebrate the city's history.