Is That All You’ve Got?

Was it my imagination or were the Flyers fans chanting “Crosby sucks” when they came back from a commercial break last night? This drives me crazy because, not only is it so obviously not true, but, unless I really wasn’t paying attention, Crosby wasn’t even playing last night. It was like they were just trying to remind us that they do, in fact, still think that Crosby sucks. However, maybe this was their way of giving Crosby a little shout out to say that they miss him and hope he comes back soon. Yeah, that or all of those people are just stupid.

You know, one of the things that I hate most are ignorant fans. It’s fine to taunt and tease because we all do it, but at least have some intelligence behind it. I’m sure that I don’t need to give a rundown of Crosby’s vast achievements on and off the ice, but I will casually mention his scoring title, Rocket Richard, Lester P. Pearson and, oh yes, his Stanley Cup ring. Let’s be honest here people – he doesn’t suck. You don’t have to like him to admit the truth. As if they wouldn’t be crapping themselves with joy if Crosby ever became a Flyer (when hell freezes over!). Whether you like the player or not you have to give credit where credit is due. I am certainly not an Ovechkin fan, but even I can’t say with a straight face that he sucks. Sure, he may not always be on top of his game and he may catch some criticism for not always living up to his usual standards, but he doesn’t suck.

It really annoys me with fans of other teams, particularly the Flyers and the Capitals, that most of the cheers tend to try and cut down our team rather than to rally theirs. How about instead of chanting “Crosby sucks” these people chant “Go Richards Go.” Although it would be annoying to hear, it would be less irritating than hearing them spout ridiculous fallacies about us. I feel like they would prefer to try and make us feel bad about ourselves, which isn’t going to happen, rather than trying to boost their own team. Is this because they can’t find anything worth cheering for? It’s not like the Flyers are a bad team so you’d think that they should be able to come up with something.

I also find the fans that start taunting Fleury after he’s let in one goal ridiculous. Now, I am all about taunting goalies and I love love love to see them pulled for poor performance, as long as it’s not one of ours. I can also get behind chanting a goalie’s name after he lets in his 9th goal on 10 shots. However, I am not going to humiliate myself and the rest of the Pens fan base by taunting someone who has let in one single solitary goal. As if until now every game in hockey history had been shut outs on both sides and he was the first person to ever actually let a puck get in the net.

As a Pens fan I think it would be nice if we had a few more crowd cheers, especially when I see the audience participation that is performed by some fans around the league. However, I’m proud that we don’t spend most of the game trying to cut down the opponents. During a game that I thoroughly enjoyed a few years ago when we beat the Islanders 9-1 the crowd, rather than chanting the name of their sorry excuse of a goalie, chose to chant “we want 10, we want 10” instead. True, we are more than willing to boo people (and can you blame us sometimes?) But we don’t really have practiced insult routines and we certainly don’t feel the need to get the organist involved in it.

I guess it just irriates me because I try to be an intelligent fan. I want to be able to hold my own in a conversation and if I’m going to say something I want to be able to back it up. I don’t want to simply throw out some random stupid comment like “Hartnell is dumb” and expect that to fly with people who actually know what they’re talking about. It reminds me of when you’re having an argument with someone and they resort to name calling or some other random wanna be insult. That basically says to everyone that this person has lost the argument and is ungracefully bowing out of the conversation. If I were a Flyer or Capital player (yech) I would want my team to support me, not waste their time pointing out the flaws of my opponents. But that’s just me.