The Biggest Disappointments... Teams "DEAD TO ME"

[VanIslander]

I was a Habs fan until Dryden retired and Langway went to Washington?

I was an Edmonton fan until Messier, Kurri, Tikkanen left the building...

I am always a Canucks fan but was strongly against the putrid coaching and goaltending for years back then, AFTER TRADING LINDEN **** THAT, until Burke won the draft by snagging the Sedins and later Luongo came on board.

San Jose became dead to me once Marleau left. Sorry.

Buffalo I always had a soft spot given the French Connection legacy, Peca, Hasek,... then... suddenly wtf? ... nothing to root for, roots not deep enough to stick...

Another team i had high hopes for was the Predators. But instead of retaining and building around Suter-Weber, they let Suter go to Minnesota and Weber to Montreal, their goalie left out to dry, the team in shambles... my early pro-Preds hype turned sour.

Click to read more...

 

[mrhockey193195]

I've never really had a second team that I root for. Rangers fan, and nothing else, probably until the day I die.

That being said, a small part of me will never forgive the franchise for not winning the cup while Henrik was playing.

 

[Gorskyontario]

San Jose were choke artists with Marleau.

 

[The Panther]

I'm a lifelong Oilers' fan with all the glory and trauma associated with that. Can't break that chain.

As a kid, I liked Toronto and Montreal, and used to watch them a lot. Nowdays, no. I would still like to see Montreal do well again, but after 1993 the shine has gone off that franchise. They just aren't interesting to me unless they promote French-Canadian players, as I think they should do again. They're just another corporate, bland, boring franchise now (and not a particularly good one, at that). Toronto -- I feel for the longtime fans who go back to the 60s/70s and earlier (like my Uncle Dave), but the new generation of 1%-er season ticket holders (and fans), along with the national media obsession over them makes them kind of easy to dislike.

I became a casual Kings' fan a year before Gretzky arrived, and then after he went there I followed them a bit. I also liked the post-Gretzky millennial-era plucky Kings' team that was defence-first and challenged some Cup contenders. But the Cup-era Kings' team I just had no feeling for, and the current club I find to be the most boring team in the NHL.

So, those clubs that I used to cheer for are all kind of dead to me, although I would love to see Montreal do well again someday (preferably with more French-Canadian stars).

 

[Albatros]

 

[Michael Farkas]

I've never had even a "second team" (much less more) and I've never considered not rooting for the team that I've been rooting for since I was an even smaller child...

1. My favorite team
...
t-32nd. All other teams

 

[jigglysquishy]

I've bounced around teams a lot.

Both my parent's family's are split between Leafs and Habs. My dad is a Leafs fan, but spent the 70s loving the Orr Bruins. He spent half the 80s working in Calgary and loved the Gretzky Oilers. My brothers are Flames and Sens fans so it's a pretty mixed fan world.

I was a Jets fan as a little guy because of Selanne, but they moved when I was fairly young. I migrated to the Devils from probably 1998-2002 because I wanted to be a goalie and emulated Brodeur. But being a goalie never stuck and I drifted away. I liked the Flames for a bit with Iginla.

After the lockout I never really had a main team. In general, I just cheered for Canadian teams. From 2000-2015 I had family in each Canadian NHL city so there was always some tie. It wasn't until the Jets came back that I locked in.

I still keep a bit of the floater in me. I still cheer for Canadian teams. I definitely enjoyed the Crosby Penguins and McDavid Oilers. But I've also stuck with the Jets.

 

[Idiot Stick]

was a vegas fan cause they had the same name as my college plus loved watching Fleury.

I dont think i need to state the obvious

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

I've never had even a "second team" (much less more) and I've never considered not rooting for the team that I've been rooting for since I was an even smaller child...

1. My favorite team
...
t-32nd. All other teams

I bet vanilla is your favourite ice cream flavour too.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

during much of the messier era the canucks were actually dead to me, though i was a teenager and interested in other things so i never actually thought “this team is dead to me”

i became interested again after messier left, though that was really more of a natural me coming back to hockey thing

when naslund lost the hart, ross, rocket, and smythw division on the same sunday, that was the first time i considered the team might be dead to me

when they later that spring let minnesota come back from a 3-1 deficit, i actually wrote them off

but of course i still kept watching hoping that the next year would be different because that team had enough pieces to make you believe

when bertuzzi played like garbage through much of the season after getting his contract extension i was getting close

but still i watched on, because we were making a bid for the division and looked poised to go on a run, even with bertuzzi sucking

and i watched the colorado game in anticipation, not because of the possible steve moore retribution but because that was a huge game with the division and playoff seeding on the line and i wanted to see us finally beat colorado

and i even kept watching after we lost 8-2 to the avs and bertuzzi made a fool out of himself, the team, and probably the entire sport

but in the playoffs, when we fell behind to calgary and naslund made that end to end rush to set up cooke’s tying goal in the last minutes of game seven, and then not long into overtime gelinas scored to take the series, i was done.

until luongo arrived, that team was dead to me. because i knew that core was only ever going to get my hopes up then mercilessly crush them.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I bet vanilla is your favourite ice cream flavour too.

Yes, but I'm deeply passionate about it and love it unconditionally.

And no one will believe this, but I was actually eating a vanilla yogurt while I typed this...

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I've also never had a second team, but I've had three first teams.

Growing up in Seattle, my preference (even at the time) would be to have had a Seattle team (this is important for later in the story). To the extent games were shown on CBUT they were Canucks games, so I became a Canucks fan, including being at college in Bellingham when they made their run to the 1994 Finals.

Went to grad school in Colorado and remained a Canucks fan (I have photos of me wearing my MCLEAN sweater around Boulder during the first-round series in 1996). I did go to the Avalanche parade in 1996 downtown and it was a lot of fun. Soured on the Canucks when Mike Keenan (who I could not stand) was hired and then traded McLean and Linden (admittedly the second trade was a good one). Decided to switch to the Avalanche because they were the locals and had a fun lineup (even in Montreal, Patrick Roy was my #2 fave after McLean).

Switched to Seattle as soon as the team was announced, but continued to root for the Avalanche until the Kraken started playing games. This is probably the closest I've been to having a second team now, but KSE has decided that they don't want their Avalanche games on my cable system and I don't care enough to pirate the games, so I've lost interest. Go Kraken.

 

[buffalowing88]

The Sabres are pretty close to being dead to me at this point. A part of me just wishes the team would move. There's a rot in the culture of the organization that has festered for so many years now that the weight of pressure to try and reverse it seems insurmountable.

It doesn't help that I live in NC now and the Hurricanes have a really likable team and surprisingly fun fans.

 

[MadLuke]

As a Nordiques fans, Colorado slowly over time as the team stopped to look like them anymore, as Sakic-Forsberg-Foote-Kamensky-Deadmarsh, etc... left or retired, not sure if there was a clear clean cut moment, lock-out maybe, has not only not many Nordiques were still left but the still Nordiques coded in my brains of the early days of being a Avalanche fans like Roy-Lemieux-etc... started to go has well.

Slowly over time they became purely an other franchise

 

[VanIslander]

San Jose were choke artists with Marleau.

Lol.

He had more game-winning goals than Gretzky, Yzerman, Iginla, Crosby, Lafleur... only 8 players ever scored more.

The lack of cups isnt justly on the shoulders of the team's star. Marleau was 5 times voted "fan favorite" by season ticket holders. Only 14 players over 30+ franchises ever had more fan support. #1 was Bourque, of course, who won it most years. He is the gold standard of fan support. #2 is Shane Doan.

 

[MadLuke]

only 8 players ever scored more.

I think we all agree that GWG is a strange stats in a low scoring sport, specially the way the nhl count it.

But only 14 forwards played more games than Marleau in playoff history and one of those was Guy Carbonneau...

If you look at the top 50 players with most goals in playoff history, there GWG per games played average rate is 0.081.

Marleau scored 16 in 195.... 0.082 per game played, pretty much the expected amount, which could make your point very well, nothing specially low about it or high (like Richard-Bossy-Gretzky-Sakic-Lafleur-Briere-Forsberg, etc...)

He had more game-winning goals than Gretzky

At first I thought we were talking about the playoff, forget the message above, but it is not only 6 players has more GWG in the regular season ? Or do you mean combined ? In the regular season considering he played the most games, usually on very good team that wins a lot, part of his career in a league that tried to reduce ties game quite a bit, you would expect him to be high.

 

[Brodeur]

I was a SoCal kid that Gretzky helped convert into being a hockey fan. Hockey got on my radar by like 1991 and really escalated with the Kings playoff run in 1993.

Due to bad management decisions and the owner's financial issues, the 1993 Kings were dismantled in short order.

1993 Western Conference Champions
--------------
Robitaille-Gretzky-Kurri
Granato-Carson-Sandstrom
Donnelly-Millen-Shuchuk
Rychel-Conacher-Taylor

Zhitnik-Blake
Watters-McSorley
Huddy-Sydor

Hrudey-Stauber

By opening day 1996, the only guy who remained was Rob Blake.

Kings missed the playoffs in 1994. The rest of the kids at school were picking teams to temporarily bandwagon. I ended up choosing the Devils because I liked their uniforms and this rookie named Martin Brodeur was doing well. Kings were eliminated on the last day of the season in 1995. Devils had been a fun ride the previous year, so I went with them again.

School kids called me out for being a front runner and I've been overcompensating for nearly 30 years.

But just the way the Kings were dismantled was rough:

- McSorley for McEachern - Kings didn't have the money, so they dealt McSorley after matching an offer sheet on him.

- McEachern/Sandstrom for McSorley/Paek - Gretzky begged management to get McSorley back, but it came at a cost of Tomas Sandstrom

- Robitaille for Tocchet - Long standing rumor that Wayne and Luc didn't get along, so Luc was swapped for a Wayne buddy in Tocchet.

- Zhitnik for Fuhr/Boucher - Maybe some other off ice reasons to deal Zhitnik. But Fuhr stunk for LA and left as a free agent after the season (and then proceeded to rejuvenate his career). Boucher took years to turn a corner and LA only got one good season before he left as a free agent.

- Sydor for Zmolek/Churla - It was odd, Larry Robinson had a good track record with young D but something didn't click with Sydor who was traded for "toughness."

- Gretzky traded for futures - perhaps the nail in the coffin for me in terms of the Kings being my primary team. Futures didn't really pan out, oddly the Kurri/McSorley trade was the one that helped restock the cupboard.

 

[sr edler]

I am always a Canucks fan but was strongly against the putrid coaching and goaltending for years back then, AFTER TRADING LINDEN **** THAT, until Burke won the draft by snagging the Sedins and later Luongo came on board.

You forgot to mention how Cliff Ronning broke your heart with his constant floating.

when naslund lost the hart, ross, rocket, and smythw division on the same sunday, that was the first time i considered the team might be dead to me

... I get what you're saying here but it still sounds funny to me because most of those things listed are just individual awards, and then a divisional crown.

when they later that spring let minnesota come back from a 3-1 deficit, i actually wrote them off

This on the other hand. Oof.

 

[mrhockey193195]

As a Nordiques fans, Colorado slowly over time as the team stopped to look like them anymore, as Sakic-Forsberg-Foote-Kamensky-Deadmarsh, etc... left or retired, not sure if there was a clear clean cut moment, lock-out maybe, has not only not many Nordiques were still left but the Nordiques coded of the early days of being a Avalange fans like Roy-Lemieux-etc... started to go.

Slowly over time they became purely an other franchise

This makes a ton of sense. Do you have a new favorite team?

I was a SoCal kid that Gretzky helped convert into being a hockey fan. Hockey got on my radar by like 1991 and really escalated with the Kings playoff run in 1993.

Due to bad management decisions and the owner's financial issues, the 1993 Kings were dismantled in short order.

1993 Western Conference Champions
--------------
Robitaille-Gretzky-Kurri
Granato-Carson-Sandstrom
Donnelly-Millen-Shuchuk
Rychel-Conacher-Taylor

Zhitnik-Blake
Watters-McSorley
Huddy-Sydor

Hrudey-Stauber

By opening day 1996, the only guy who remained was Rob Blake.

Kings missed the playoffs in 1994. The rest of the kids at school were picking teams to temporarily bandwagon. I ended up choosing the Devils because I liked their uniforms and this rookie named Martin Brodeur was doing well. Kings were eliminated on the last day of the season in 1995. Devils had been a fun ride the previous year, so I went with them again.

School kids called me out for being a front runner and I've been overcompensating for nearly 30 years.

But just the way the Kings were dismantled was rough:

- McSorley for McEachern - Kings didn't have the money, so they dealt McSorley after matching an offer sheet on him.

- McEachern/Sandstrom for McSorley/Paek - Gretzky begged management to get McSorley back, but it came at a cost of Tomas Sandstrom

- Robitaille for Tocchet - Long standing rumor that Wayne and Luc didn't get along, so Luc was swapped for a Wayne buddy in Tocchet.

- Zhitnik for Fuhr/Boucher - Maybe some other off ice reasons to deal Zhitnik. But Fuhr stunk for LA and left as a free agent after the season (and then proceeded to rejuvenate his career). Boucher took years to turn a corner and LA only got one good season before he left as a free agent.

- Sydor for Zmolek/Churla - It was odd, Larry Robinson had a good track record with young D but something didn't click with Sydor who was traded for "toughness."

- Gretzky traded for futures - perhaps the nail in the coffin for me in terms of the Kings being my primary team. Futures didn't really pan out, oddly the Kurri/McSorley trade was the one that helped restock the cupboard.

Any conflicting feelings at all during the 2012 finals? Or by that point your fondness for the Kings was at zero?

 

[MadLuke]

This makes a ton of sense. Do you have a new favorite team?

Took a while to accept Montreal but around Koivu cancer return I was fully in (I was Gilmour Maple Leaf in the west they became a eastern team and competitor so where let go, Nordique in the east, Mario Lemieux when the Nordiques were out of the picture fans), so the Penguins continued to be team B all along, no western team that a particularly root for anymore.

 

[Brodeur]

Any conflicting feelings at all during the 2012 finals? Or by that point your fondness for the Kings was at zero?

By 2012, the Kings were maybe a distant #2 team for me. In college, I had fun attending some of the 2001 Kings playoffs games. Hockey was new to a couple of my roommates, so I steered them towards cheering for the Kings. LA was fun to follow post-lockout as they were rebuilding, so it was fun to lurk on the Kings board to debate things like Doughy vs Bogosian.

It's funny, I'm leaning towards not driving up for Devils@Kings this weekend out of pure laziness. I was fortunate that the Kings home games for the 2012 Finals were Tuesday/Thursday/Tuesday. I didn't have the stomach to fight rush hour traffic which saved me money and some aggravation.

 

[Crosby2010]

I guess with the Mitchell Miller story I have the opposite way of looking at things. Always thought highly of Bergeron and Marchand but they were true heels when they turned into Karens over the Bruins signing Miller. Hardly a captain thing to do. Then the Bruins doing the whole fake outrage once the media made a fuss out of it. I'm not a fan of banning people from the NHL who haven't even gotten a shot yet, so the B's getting bounced 1st round probably was poetic justice.

 

[Gorskyontario]

Lol.

He had more game-winning goals than Gretzky, Yzerman, Iginla, Crosby, Lafleur... only 8 players ever scored more.

The lack of cups isnt justly on the shoulders of the team's star. Marleau was 5 times voted "fan favorite" by season ticket holders. Only 14 players over 30+ franchises ever had more fan support. #1 was Bourque, of course, who won it most years. He is the gold standard of fan support. #2 is Shane Doan.

This makes close to no sense at all. Patrick Marleau was a marginal compiler at best, and spent his career underachieving in the playoffs.

 

[I Hate Blake Coleman]

I was a Leafs fan before I was a Flames fan. Darcy Tucker was my first avatar back in the day.

Flames were my secondary team.

Not sure what about the Leafs caused me to drift away but now I can't stand them. It was around the Muskoka 5 time, I think. It was probably the media.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

... I get what you're saying here but it still sounds funny to me because most of those things listed are just individual awards, and then a divisional crown.


This on the other hand. Oof.

for the first part i guess the context is the history of the franchise and the longue durée of canucks fandom, though obviously i didn’t experience the first almost 20 years. if the same thing happened today with, say, pettersson and miller next year choking away the hart/ross and division, i probably wouldn’t react close to as strongly.

for the first 20 years, the canucks sucked. not only was there no success other than a cinderella run to the finals the year after i was born, but there were precisely zero star players. no 50 goal seasons, no one really came close to 100 pts.

so i ambiently absorbed the culture of irrelevance and suckitude when i was young, and started paying attention once that was about to turn at the very end of the 80s. the oilers still had messier, who was on the cusp of leveling up, and for a brief time kurri and fuhr were still there. the flames were a powerhouse and won the cup. even winnipeg had hawerchuk. everybody gets a superstar and we got two broken down former all-stars, barry pederson and paul reinhart, and a big promising young rookie who was the runner up for the calder. but you have to realize, for a team that had won nothing and had no one notable ever, linden finishing second behind leetch for the calder was a gigantic deal. this wasn't like montreal having michael ryder come in as a rookie and finishing as raycroft’s runner up; in magnitude, it was like young patrik laine on the (new) jets pushing auston matthews right out of the draft. relative to what linden actually was, which was a very very good well-rounded player with a sub-elite offensive ceiling, the hype and excitement was completely over the top.

then we got larionov and krutov, a hall of famer and a guy who probably would have made the hall of fame if he’d just retired instead of coming to vancouver, and they flopped. meanwhile makarov put up a pt/game season and won the calder. the “we can’t have nice things” vibe was very real and actively felt.

when we got geoff courtnall, that felt like the ceiling of what a canuck could be. B+ goal scorer with a little bit of name rec due maybe more to his flashy brother than himself.

bure changed everything of course. when he came in, the entire city held its breath and thought, is this real life? because it really didn’t feel like it could be real. when he slumped after a couple of weeks and had his 3 goals/8 pts in 22 game stretch, it felt like it was happening all over again, lucy pulling the ball away. and then when he picked it back up and murdered the league down the stretch, and then the voters actually chose him for the calder over amonte, who outscored him and played for freakin’ new york, and lidstrom, who tied him in scoring and let’s be honest was probably the actual “best” rookie, that was bananas. the canucks also leveled up to become an actual good team that year (top five in the league), won their division for the first time ever, and kirk mclean was the vezina runner up and a legit and well-deserved 4th in hart voting. this is literally when i became a canucks fan just from peer pressure, because previously why would you? as kids, we all just had different teams before that. mine was the habs.

and then a year later, bure hits 60, scores 110 pts. he didn’t just hit the previously unthinkable statistical thresholds, he cleared them by 10. year after that, he leads the league in goals — again, the idea of a canuck leading the league in anything was unfathomable — and first team all-star and of course the finals run.

so that’s the context for naslund and the 2003 canucks in that game against LA.

the next plateau was the hart/ross. like, do we actually have the best player in the league? we did not. but that was demonstrated in a ridiculously gut-punching way, getting shutout by a non-playoff kings team and naslund’s childhood rival taking his shiny trophies. and the division part was also important. the avs had owned the division, literally won every division title, since they joined it. if we could have won the division with forsberg and sakic and blake all still there, this very unlikely naslund/bertuzzi core that unexpectedly came together might, you know, actually be a legit cup contender the way the late 90s/early 2000s superteams (detroit/colorado/dallas/nj) were. but we were made to see thoroughly and unmercilessly that no this was not actually a contending team, just a one line team with a garbage goalie and mental fragility issues.

and this is also the context for that game at the end of the 2010 season when the sedins went hog wild on the flames and won henrik the hart/ross. after what happened to naslund, them coming through like that and taking those awards out of the hands of peak ovechkin/crosby was like winning a cup. it seems silly to say but it was.

as i said in a thread on the canucks board recently, you really come to appreciate quinn hughes as a once in a lifetime player if you’ve been following the team long enough to remember tom kurvers as your first PP QB. our team went almost 50 years without a true star defenceman tilting the ice.