Who are our Rivals?

[Unsustainable]

Sabres / Devils / Bruins / Capitals

In that order

 

[Buenos Necas]

We seem to go through phases of rivalries with different teams, and I'd say Buffalo and Florida have cooled down. The Devils 'rivalry' has spread out through some pretty good playoff series, so I'd say another good series against them in the next couple years could help cement a rivalry. That's our problem, long-term rivals don't build through regular season play. Hopefully divisional playoffs can help us foster some of those rivalries.

 

[DaveG]

We seem to go through phases of rivalries with different teams, and I'd say Buffalo and Florida have cooled down. The Devils 'rivalry' has spread out through some pretty good playoff series, so I'd say another good series against them in the next couple years could help cement a rivalry. That's our problem, long-term rivals don't build through regular season play. Hopefully divisional playoffs can help us foster some of those rivalries.

This is absolutely true. Florida I don't consider a rival, more a pain in the ass that wouldn't go away, simply because we never ran into them in the playoffs. Sabres I still consider a rival but one that has cooled significantly over the last half-decade+ since things were REALLY heated.

Boston we have a nice thing going with, and the Devils? well, their fans ****ing hate us and it seems like every time we make the playoffs we run into them. That's a rivalry, it's not quite in the sense that if they were playing team Al Qaeda we'd be pulling for Bin Laden's boys (like say the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry), but it's probably one of the better minor rivalries in the league. A couple years of knocking eachother out of the #4 spot or knocking eachother out in the divisional playoffs will make this thing heat up again.

 

[Finnish Jerk Train]

Agreed. I'm excited to see if the new division alignment jump-starts the animosity between us and the Devils. I'm not sure if things are going anywhere with Boston, but it's fun to rile up a team like that (seriously, seeing us sweep them was the highlight of the 2011-2012 season for me). Columbus is intriguing too, but we have basically no history with them so it's hard to predict what will come of that. As for Washington, they've been frustrating at times and I feel like we're one playoff series away from having a legit rivalry with them, especially given how much they talked trash about Semin this year.

The hard part will be sustaining it for years to come.

 

[Sasha Cares]

1) Sabres and it's not even close



2) Devils

 

[What the Faulk]

They haven't played the Sabres in the playoffs in 7 years. The games in Raleigh weren't remotely heated this year.

 

[HisIceness]

I think as of right now, if we had to have a "biggest rival", it would be the Capitals. Devils/Bruins/Sabres/Penguins (to an extent) all have their claim too.

Montreal fans are still pissed about '06 and I imagine some of them still haven't quite gotten over the Miracle at Molson series.

Regarding the Panthers: There was a video on YT when the Panthers were accusing us of being divers that shows Justin Williams getting a diving call after getting tackled by a Panther. Someone in the media had written an article about how the Hurricanes supposedly were diving in the previous game between the two and the refs that game apparently were aware of said article. Anyways after Williams got tackled you could hear Laviolette scream "He got ****ing tackled". At some point during that time Erik Cole responded to the diving accusations by saying the Panthers were irrelevant. I also remember one of their TV guys hated us.

 

[SashaSemin28]

Southleast brothers till the end

Though seriously, I just don't see any rivalry between Carolina and Washington. On the whole, we want you to do well (especially those of us who were vehemently pro Sasha) but now, idk, I feel stronger about Carolina than I did before because we are moving together to the Atlantic (Kinda like how Vancouver and Buffalo are "expansion brothers").

@JaquesStappe - Sasha is the only thing I could see causing a rivalry between our two teams, but I know for sure it divided the Caps board at the time of him moving, and it still divides the Caps board now when he is brought up. Brouwers comments were stupid, and its only the lower skilled players like Brouwer, Matt Bradley, who have had an issue with Sasha, and I certainly took what Bruce Boudreau and Dale Hunter said about Sasha . You could look it this way, Ovechkin and Semin are best friends, and we should just mutually want each other to do well in a foreign division really.

 

[gocanes88]

Fanbase-wise: Buffalo, obviously. But we just don't have a rival on the ice.