What SINGLE player made you become a fan of a particular team?

[VanIslander]

• Langway left my Habs and I followed, becoming a Habs AND Caps fan.
  
• Young Coffey was my jam so I became an Oilers fan. (Gretzky helped.)
  
• Peca was traded from my Vancouver hometown team to the Sabres during his promising rookie year (for Mogilny - ugh), so when I moved to Toronto I cheered for the Sabres!

You?

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[seventieslord]

As a kid I made the Penguins my official #2 team thanks to Mario Lemieux.

 

[MadLuke]

Lemieux and the Pens, followed by Crosby. Peak Gilmour era Leafs for the western team.

 

[VanIslander]

As a kid I made the Penguins my official #2 team thanks to Mario Lemieux.

The franchise had been a joke before that, so I was indifferent, except...

A) I loved the awesome Cleveland Browns HOF secondary in the 1980's, and the Steelers were their divisional rival and Achilles' heel;

B) People were saying Lemieux was BETTER than Gretzky before he had played a single NHL game, a flagrant insult I pushed back against; Crosbyites would later do likewise.

 

[DannyGallivan]

First year I discovered I loved hockey, I asked the grown-ups: "Who scores the most goals". The answer was Phil Esposito, so he became my favorite player. "Who does he play for?" I asked... the answer was Boston, so they became my favorite team.

That lasted for two glorious seasons, until I became a massive Habs fan, which lasted for five glorious seasons until the Jets arrived.

 

[ShelbyZ]

Sergei Fedorov flying up and down the ice in his wild Nike gear made me a fan of HOCKEY.

 

[Tarantula]

As a 5 year old, Orr.....

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

As a kid I made the Penguins my official #2 team thanks to Mario Lemieux.

Me too.

 

[frisco]

I followed Tom Barrasso from Buffalo to Pittsburgh. Eventually, the Pens became my favorite team although Buffalo is my 1B.

My Best-Carey

 

[Big Phil]

Mario made me take a lot more interest in the Penguins.

 

[Super Fadio Bro]

Pavel Datsyuk is the reason why I’m a Red Wing fan.

Patrice Bergeron is why the Bruins are my #2 team.

 

[VanIslander]

Bourque was fantastic, but i never cheered a Bruins win. (The 1970's Habs in me wouldn't allow it)

Yzerman was awesome! But Detroit? Ugh. I just couldn't ever be happy when they won.

 

[Gambitman]

I wasn’t ever really a Jets fan, but Teemu Selanne’s 76 goal season made me like them rather than ignore them. I also became a bit of a Blues/Brett Hull fan after his 72 goal season and even moreso after reading his biography that came out at the end of the season. I was young (and loved money/finance)and was particularly enthralled with the story of Brett playing out his option and his asking price going up all season long.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

like everyone else in vancouver my age, pavel bure

 

[Normand Lacombe]

Bernie Nicholls made the Kings my number two team and this was years before Gretzky arrived. Nicholls not only was a scorer, but he had a charisma that made him seem like a cool dude.

 

[The Panther]

I grew up mostly in Alberta, bleeding the copper and blue of the 80s' Oilers, but other teams I liked because of certain players:

- I became a Kings' fan during 1987 because I liked Nicholls, Robitaille, and Carson. Of course, after the Gretzky trade I had yet more reason to follow them (those sexy new uniforms were cool, too!).
- My family is from S-W Ontario (as am I, originally) so I also cheered for the sad-sack Maple Leafs in the mid-/late-80s, which made me seem exotic to Alberta farm kids . I really liked Russ Courtnall, Gary Leeman, and Wendel Clark. In 1986, I had to move to Ontario for a short time, and on my second day at the new school, those exact three guys (the "hounds") appeared at our local donut shop (about a 5-min. walk from my Grandparents' house), signing autographs and such, but because I was new at school, nobody told me, and I missed it...

Although I really liked Steve Yzerman, I never came to cheer for Detroit somehow. I think I hold a grudge against them for getting really good just when the Alberta teams and small-city teams couldn't compete because of money problems. Now that the Wings have fallen to the bottom again, I can cheer for them...

- I've been a fan of Lecavalier, Stamkos, and esp. Martin St.Louis, so I respect the Lightning a lot, if I don't exactly cheer for them.

 

[Conbon]

Craig Conroy and the Flames because that is my first name.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Jagr helped a lot.

 

[EpochLink]

When the original Jets left, I became a fan of the Vancouver Canucks due to Pavel Bure.

 

[Prsut18]

I´m a Wings fan, but when Mrazek went to Cariolina, I´m folowing their team closely too.. maybe for the first time since they are part of the NHL

 

[sr edler]

• Langway left my Habs and I followed, becoming a Habs AND Caps fan.
  
• Young Coffey was my jam so I became an Oilers fan. (Gretzky helped.)
  
• Peca was traded from my Vancouver hometown team to the Sabres during his promising rookie year (for Mogilny - ugh), so when I moved to Toronto I cheered for the Sabres!

You?

How many teams are you a fan of? I know you're a Sharks fan too (because of Marleau?). Montreal, Washington, Edmonton, Vancouver, Buffalo, San Jose? Any more teams?

As a kid I made the Penguins my official #2 team thanks to Mario Lemieux.

Me too.

Lemieux and the Pens

Mario made me take a lot more interest in the Penguins.

When the Penguins were at their highest heights in the early 90s around 1991–1992 and defending Cup champions I was 10–11 or so and a TV channel here in my home country, Kanal 5 (Channel 5, a rubbish TV channel by the way), had just begun broadcasting some games (live I think, in the middle of the night). Problem was though they only/exclusively showed Pittsburgh Penguins games.

I had no idea then, and I still have no idea, if this was due to TV rights or not, but I still remember quite vividly how the commentators made it appear that the Penguins were the only important team in the league worth of any notice whatsoever, which kinda rubbed a young me the wrong way. I thought "what the hell, there must be more than one interesting team in this league with other interesting players than just this particular team". It annoyed the hell out of me, how (supposedly non-biased) grown ups on TV appeared to favor one team in front of all the others, force feeding it down everyone's throats.

And it couldn't have been because of home players, because yes Ulf Samuelsson was a good player, but him and Kjell weren't exactly the flashiest of the flashy drawing drooling Swedish hockey fans en masse to the TV screens. Sure, both Mats Näslund and Håkan Loob had just departed the league, but a young Mats Sundin had just entered it and we had some other decent guys too in Sandström, Steen, Pelle Eklund, Calle Johansson, Olausson, Dahlén.

It's not like this made me hate Pittsburgh, but it sure didn't make me a fan either. I think I was already a Bure fan at the time because I had seen him on a hockey card in Soviet outfit and probably in the 1991 World Championships too, but I don't think I knew yet that he had been drafted by the Canucks. At this time I mostly listened to SEL broadcasts in the family car tuning in on Färjestad games (because of Loob).

Thomas Rundqvist was chosen to the 1991 World Championship All-Star team in front of both Sakic and Roenick too.

 

[LemmyUlanov55]

Doug Weight and to a lesser extend Gordon Sherven & Dale Derkatch.

 

[Arrowfodder]

Sundin for Toronto.

(Closely followed by Potvin and Gilmour..)

 

[rfournier103]

Bobby Orr is the reason I’m a Bruins fan.

Although I was born in September 1974 and don’t recall a single game he played, his influence is the reason. Orr made fans of the masses, and even in the 1980s, my classmates and I were talking about him in elementary school even though none of us had ever seen him play.

Orr’s legacy lives in Boston to this day. Even though the Bruins have won only a single title since Orr retired, he got them back on track and expanded the fanbase.

 

[FrozenJagrt]

Oh lord, too many. As a kid, all my peers were big fans of the Avs because of Roy so I was into them for a bit. Lindros made me like Philly. Loved the Ducks for Giguere. The year the Rangers got Bure, I got really into them because they had him, Fleury, Messier, Lindros, Leetch and Richter, which was basically a super team in my child mind.

Once Ovechkin was drafted, the Caps permanently became what you could call my second team. I had already liked them when Kolzig was playing, and Ovechkin combined all the elements I loved in a player with his speed, aggression, goal scoring and creativity. I'm at the point in my life where once Ovechkin finally leaves Washington, I will drop the idea of a second team completely.