Next on our list of "learn to hate in the East" are the Toronto Maple Leafs. Finally a team that will be a little easier to hate.
Starting with: What is the plural of the word leaf? Come on, our friends up north already jam a "U" in colour and spell centre completely wrong. But "leafs"? You don't even get to shout, "It's the proper British way to spell it!" on Leafs.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word for the Leafs. The opposite of love is indifference, so for most of my time as an NHL fan I've been indifferent to the Leafs. I really never cared if they won or lost, or if they were even playing games. That type of attitude will drive a Leafs fan crazy. "Wait, what? You don't care? One way or the other?? You can't do that!" You have to have a position on the Leaves, er Leafs.
The reason that attitude prevails is because if you live in Toronto - the center of the known universe - all you hear is Leafs. It's understandable. The media coverage given to the NHL team located in hockey crazed Canada's largest city is unlike anything we can fathom here in quite, Midwestern Columbus.
Wait, we can fathom it...think Urban Meyer press conference the Friday before the Michigan game. Then multiply that by every day of the hockey season. That's the Tronna media for the Leafs.
That type of coverage leads to the team being overcovered for the rest of us, and many recent seasons its lead to the Leafs being overhyped. Follow a lot of hockey media people on Twitter and you quickly find out that Leafs news is about 80% of what they tweet. My twitter timeline got bombed with 30 second updates on the Kadri signing, the Franson signing, and the Kessel "incident" against Buffalo...and that was all before the actual season even started.
And this is all before listening to the biggest Leafs fan in the media...
As in previous East Hatred posts, those are some good reasons any hockey fan would want to hate the Leafs, what about us here in Columbus? You know, the little brothers of the NHL. The team that loses every review that goes back to Toronto. (Wes Walz pants, people!!!) The team that the Toronto based NHL schedulers still look at and think, "Oh we gave Columbus a back-to-back-to-back-to-back? It's only Columbus."
Oh yeah, getting a good Columbus inferiority complex going here. But the league people in Toronto make it so easy, especially when it comes to the Leafs.
Granted we had an unbalanced schedule in the NHL for a while, and we were in opposite conferences, but tonight will mark the Leafs 5th visit to Columbus in 14 seasons of hockey.
Four previous games.
That just seems hard to believe even with all the lockouts and such since 2000 to have only been here four times prior to tonight. The league's biggest market doesn't need to make the fairly short trip to Columbus, apparently.
And we've only beat them one time here. It's hard to accumulate many wins when a team only graces you with their presence once every 3 or 4 years.
Today, however, the Columbus Blue Jackets will be the second most important NHL team on twitter. Soak it up, Jackets fans!
Starting with: What is the plural of the word leaf? Come on, our friends up north already jam a "U" in colour and spell centre completely wrong. But "leafs"? You don't even get to shout, "It's the proper British way to spell it!" on Leafs.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word for the Leafs. The opposite of love is indifference, so for most of my time as an NHL fan I've been indifferent to the Leafs. I really never cared if they won or lost, or if they were even playing games. That type of attitude will drive a Leafs fan crazy. "Wait, what? You don't care? One way or the other?? You can't do that!" You have to have a position on the Leaves, er Leafs.
The reason that attitude prevails is because if you live in Toronto - the center of the known universe - all you hear is Leafs. It's understandable. The media coverage given to the NHL team located in hockey crazed Canada's largest city is unlike anything we can fathom here in quite, Midwestern Columbus.
Wait, we can fathom it...think Urban Meyer press conference the Friday before the Michigan game. Then multiply that by every day of the hockey season. That's the Tronna media for the Leafs.
That type of coverage leads to the team being overcovered for the rest of us, and many recent seasons its lead to the Leafs being overhyped. Follow a lot of hockey media people on Twitter and you quickly find out that Leafs news is about 80% of what they tweet. My twitter timeline got bombed with 30 second updates on the Kadri signing, the Franson signing, and the Kessel "incident" against Buffalo...and that was all before the actual season even started.
And this is all before listening to the biggest Leafs fan in the media...
As in previous East Hatred posts, those are some good reasons any hockey fan would want to hate the Leafs, what about us here in Columbus? You know, the little brothers of the NHL. The team that loses every review that goes back to Toronto. (Wes Walz pants, people!!!) The team that the Toronto based NHL schedulers still look at and think, "Oh we gave Columbus a back-to-back-to-back-to-back? It's only Columbus."
Oh yeah, getting a good Columbus inferiority complex going here. But the league people in Toronto make it so easy, especially when it comes to the Leafs.
Granted we had an unbalanced schedule in the NHL for a while, and we were in opposite conferences, but tonight will mark the Leafs 5th visit to Columbus in 14 seasons of hockey.
Four previous games.
That just seems hard to believe even with all the lockouts and such since 2000 to have only been here four times prior to tonight. The league's biggest market doesn't need to make the fairly short trip to Columbus, apparently.
And we've only beat them one time here. It's hard to accumulate many wins when a team only graces you with their presence once every 3 or 4 years.
Today, however, the Columbus Blue Jackets will be the second most important NHL team on twitter. Soak it up, Jackets fans!
And angry Leafs fan chiming in to let us all know "Leafs" is the correct spelling based upon the Maple Leaf regiment in WWI in 5...4... 3... 2... 1...
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about the "Leafs", one can't help but also talk about the inverse proportionality of their media coverage and hype machine when compared against their on-ice success.
ReplyDelete"Nothing since 1967, but we're working on it!"
It must be torture for a Leafs fan to see all those banners in Montreal. Yin and yang, I tell ya...