What former hot rivalries do you miss?

[Derick*]

Maybe I'm giving too much of a voice to the kiddies at HF who take everything Bettman says or does and runs with it in the opposite direction, but there was a lot of talk about "Well, I won't be watching the Winter Classic this year since it will just be a Sid/Ovie lovefest", same with two years ago with people going out of their way to not watch the Pens/Caps series.

Again, I may be silly for assuming that the opinions of some of these clowns actually carries over to the three dimensional world, but it still seems like, somewhere along the way, it stopped being okay to like a good player or team, lest you be labelled a bandwagonner.

Or are you equivocating? Do the "kiddies"/"clowns" complain about the commercials/conversation about them, or complain that the games themselves are uninteresting? I enjoyed the Pens/Caps series and I plan on enjoying the Winter Classic but that doesn't mean I want to see Crosby or Ovechkin's face on every magazine cover, or news articles and threads that have nothing to do with them unnecessarily somehow become about them (like this one). It's not that them or their rivalry isn't interesting, it's that other things are interesting too and it's grating to have things you've seen/heard about them five hundred times before get in the way of reading about other hockey subjects. It's not annoying because I'm offended other people care too much, but because it gets in the way.

The rivalry is both real and imagined. It's real but it's not big or elaborate enough to talk about it as much as the media wants to, so the media imagines parts of it that don't exist. The real rivalry, the actual anger and competition between them, is interesting. What's said about it is rarely anything new about their actual play or personal rivalry, it's just the same things being said repeatedly, and the rivalry (at least the one thats talked about) seems to be between their fans more than them.

Something actually related to their rivalry (their game in the Olympics, their playoff series, their scuffle in the regular season that year) happens once ever 6-12 months and if one of those things happens that's interesting because it's shows how they're rivals, not just that their media personas are rivals. But every single time any of them does anything independently it's arbitrarily compared to the other. Things they do independently that we decide to compare isn't a rivalry. It's a comparison. I just noticed that my laptop weighs a lot more than my computer mouse; that's doesn't make them rivals. John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi are rivals. That doesn't make comparing how much sugar they each put in their coffee, or how much of a stupid biased gay wad either of their supporters tend to be, important or interesting.

 

[heutZe]

I would love it if the NHL brought back the old divisional playoffs (with only four divisions of course). Okay, it was probably not fair that four teams automatically qualified for the playoffs in one division, but it bred such great rivalries. And in todays NHL there are more parity and we will probably not see those stretches we saw in, for example, the 80s Smythe division where the Canucks, Kings and Jets never got out of the first round because they had to face the Oilers or the Flames.

 

[Buck Aki Berg]

Or are you equivocating? Do the "kiddies"/"clowns" complain about the commercials/conversation about them, or complain that the games themselves are uninteresting?

Considering how many of them patted themselves on the back for having not watched, I'd imagine it to be the former.

I would love it if the NHL brought back the old divisional playoffs (with only four divisions of course). Okay, it was probably not fair that four teams automatically qualified for the playoffs in one division, but it bred such great rivalries. And in todays NHL there are more parity and we will probably not see those stretches we saw in, for example, the 80s Smythe division where the Canucks, Kings and Jets never got out of the first round because they had to face the Oilers or the Flames.

I'd love it too .. when you have teams playing out of their conference instead of their division, the odds of frequently meeting the same team goes down dramatically. We were fortunate to get some good runs with the likes of Toronto/Ottawa and Edmonton/Dallas and Buffalo/Philadelphia, but those are the exception to the rule.

 

[Derick*]

I am amazed by how I can start with one simple thing to say and before I'm ready to click post I've typed that god damn much.

 

[hockeydad55]

I'm a huge Wings fan, and I have both an old-school answer and a new-school answer.

Detroit - Toronto

Detroit - Colorado

(I'm guessing you guys can figure out which one is which. )

 

[Derick*]

I'm a huge Wings fan, and I have both an old-school answer and a new-school answer.

Detroit - Toronto

Detroit - Colorado

(I'm guessing you guys can figure out which one is which. )

Are you father time?

 

[obsenssive*]

Toronto and Ottawa still meet each other on a regular basis but it doesn't have the same energy as it did before the lockout.

approx. from 98/99-2003/04 whenever you went to a game at the corel center during a tv break they would announce if the leafs had lost that night, and the place would go bezerk! fans used to have "leafs suck" scarfs and people would run up and down the stairs giving people high fives when they heard the leafs lost. I even remember vendors selling really cool electronic signs that would scroll "leafs suck".

post lockout thats all stopped. they still show out of town scores on the scoreboard (which are mostly ignored), but its no longer announced if the leafs lose, and they've stopped selling anti-leafs merch at scotiabank place.

really sad i think. that was a huge part of my childhood, just going and seeing the passion of hatred made it so much fun. sigh... that was a decade ago. everything is so corporate and fake now it makes it "damp". its like buzz killington came into the picture somehow....

 

[Scott1980]

Well, I told a friend of mine a few days ago, "Ottawa is winning tonight (against Toronto)", cause they still hate the Leafs.

And, hey, down three-zip, I knew the Leafs wouldn't quit! Not against Ottawa! Heck, the Leafs fans are still booing Alfredson! And how old is that Sundin stick throwing mock he did?

 

[Shawa666]

I saw the late end of the battle of Quebec. And even if it had cooled down a bit safter the good friday brawl, it was still a pretty intense rivalry. I still think that the Nords hired Guy Lafleur just to annoy the habs.

 

[thehumanpanda]

Canadiens/Flames? Not that this rivary was very real, but I do remember watching them play in the 86 SCF and the 89 SCF and both taking turns winning. Just my age at the time made this match-up interesting. They'll play in the Heritage Classic this season and I'm not the only one going to remember and think about their SCF's.

Also Edmonton and Boston and Edmonton and Philly for the same reasons, but it didn't seem like a rivalry because Edmonton always won.

Basically, you always miss things about sports when they're gone.

 

[Derick*]

approx. from 98/99-2003/04 whenever you went to a game at the corel center during a tv break they would announce if the leafs had lost that night, and the place would go bezerk! fans used to have "leafs suck" scarfs and people would run up and down the stairs giving people high fives when they heard the leafs lost. I even remember vendors selling really cool electronic signs that would scroll "leafs suck".

post lockout thats all stopped. they still show out of town scores on the scoreboard (which are mostly ignored), but its no longer announced if the leafs lose, and they've stopped selling anti-leafs merch at scotiabank place.

really sad i think. that was a huge part of my childhood, just going and seeing the passion of hatred made it so much fun. sigh... that was a decade ago. everything is so corporate and fake now it makes it "damp". its like buzz killington came into the picture somehow....

We all wish we could go back to the agarian pre-corporate utopia that was eight years ago.