There's a lot of factors at work I think. Firstly, we were in direct competiton with the most vocal, intense fanbases out there and the media fed them controversy like it was Monday Night Raw. The Canucks became a top team and other Canadian markets went blind with jealousy. Their jealousy turned to anger and hatred and the media fed it to them, because that's their job. Then you throw in the big American markets like LA, Chicago, and Boston that became adversaries. Once the big markets decide to hate a team, the rest of the league will follow suit and so will their respective media. So every dive, every comment, every extra shot was scrutinized, twisted and sensationalized by the big markets and therefore all NHL markets. We had Oiler fans spending hours of their life creating videos of Canuck dives, in fact there's no other team that has diving videos made just for them as far as I have seen. Calgary Puck became a breeding ground for physcotics. I honestly know Oiler and Flame fans that would rather see the Canucks lose then have their own team win. That's infatuation. These big market teams became infatuated with hating the Canucks. That was what hockey was to them as their own teams meddled about and the Canucks rose to the top of the NHL. I spend time in Alberta for work and it's all over the radio, it's all over the cities, and it's all people talk about when it comes to hockey. It wasn't about their own teams, it was about the Canucks and their fans suffering.
Now with Tortarella's comments, we see that it didn't just spread to the fans of the sport, it spread right to the top of the NHL. The perception became that the Canucks dove and whined (they were guilty of both, but no where near to the extent it was made out to be) and combined with the Auger incident, the Canucks are not the refs favourite team. Then you add in the heated series with Boston, who just happen to be owned by probably the most powerful man in hockey. Bettman, Shanahan and most of the league answer to these BOG owners beleive me. None moreso than Jacobs. Once Jacobs was against us, we were hooped. And we're still feeling the after effects of our hooping.
Whether it's fair or not (it's not) the Canucks have been marked as the team to hate and it's going to take some time for that label to wear off. The good news is I beleive it will, and I beleive Tortarella feels the same. They're being retroactively punished for old bad habits and over-zealous Canuck haters. By asking for a clean slate like this, Tortarella is saying there is a problem here, we're not that team anymore, let's all move forward. Hopefully it works.
