A trio of Vancouver Canucks fans opted to go incognito mode during a February game in Seattle. The Canucks have the NHL’s worst record and just 50 points going into Wednesday’s game against Colorado.Steph Chambers/Getty Images
Given how poorly their season has gone, the Toronto Maple Leafs have only one thing left going for them – the Vancouver Canucks.
Some teams have the sort of year that gets everyone fired. Vancouver is having the kind of season that, in a more sensible world, would get the franchise’s charter revoked. Collectively, this group would have trouble manning an automated toll booth.
It’s not that they’re bad at hockey, which they are. Plenty of other clubs are as well. Being bad at hockey is easy. No big decisions to make. No stressing about how the next road trip will turn out. It’s going to be a disaster. Might as well quit early and start drinking.
Being bad at hockey means you have no responsibilities. Well, one. You can’t be bad at hockey and be insufferable at the same time. Which, as it turns out, is the current mission statement of the Canucks franchise.
Canucks’ decision to revoke credential of reporter alarms colleagues
This week, they made news by pulling the credential of a reporter at the Daily Hive. He wrote something they didn’t like about the owner’s wine business, riffing on something someone else wrote that they probably also didn’t like, but those original reporters are smart enough to avoid Vancouver Canucks’ hockey games.
A normally unhinged organization would have sent the reporter an e-mail telling him not to bother showing up that night. This unusually unhinged one waited until the first intermission to toss him. No word on whether they tore the credential from his neck, 19th-century military style.
The Daily Hive pulled the story after their reporter was ejected. Not a great look for them, or their story. Still, all that does is highlight the reactionary silliness of the Canucks’ response.
You know how many people were interested in this before the team went all Richard Nixon? Roughly none. You know how many are interested now? All of them.
It’s been a rough season for Evander Kane (centre) and his Canucks teammates this season. The team traded franchise player Quinn Hughes to Minnesota in December and committed to a rebuild.Candice Ward/The Associated Press
When The Globe’s Simon Houpt reported on the ejection, a Canucks’ spokesperson explained that the club reacted this way, in part, because the article in question took “flippant liberties.”
Do these people bother reading what’s published about the conspiracy of mediocrity they call a hockey team? If journalists weren’t taking flippant liberties, there would be nothing to write.
You ever read a European tabloid on its local football club? Those people are the real killers.
In Canada, every tongue lashing is more of a soft licking. Franchises in this country have no clue how bad it could be, but isn’t, because Canadians lack a talent for spite.
The Canucks should be pointed and laughed at all day every day. They’re charging good money to watch a bunch of pylons get run over for two and a half hours. You could do that for free hanging out at a driving school. It’s not theft in any legal sense, but they are stealing money from people.
The smart thing to do is shut up, make your millions and take your lumps from the Daily Hive or whoever else. The juice of punching back is worth so much less than the squeeze. If you’re feeling too frisky to let it go, have your lawyers make a quiet call. It would have achieved the same result, minus any headlines.
Maybe Canada is the problem. The Ottawa Senators had a vaguely similar incident earlier this season after goalie Linus Ullmark became the focus of an online whisper campaign. Instead of doing the smart thing – ignoring it – the club went publicly ballistic. Team GM Steve Staios issued a fulminating statement about “the lowest form of trolls and sick people who scour the internet.”
Yes. And?
What’s your next move? Heading down into the sewers with a chainsaw to cut through anything that looks like fibre-optic cable?
You own (or play for) a sports team, so people are going to take shots. Some of those shots will be below the belt (though nowhere close to as low as you’d get in more vibrant international media markets).
Canucks players like Filip Hronek, back right, have often been the downcast face in the background this year, as the team chases the first overall pick in this year’s NHL draft.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Viewed from 10,000 feet, every negative piece is a chance for your customers to stick up for you. There is always a section of fandom policing ‘negativity’, and another that hates the press as much as you do. Let them do their work.
That’s not good enough? You want to be left alone entirely? Go run a widget factory.
Most of the people who own teams once did some version of that. They got into sports so that they could be more famous. Well, congratulations – you’re famous now. Here’s me punching you in the crotch by way of a ‘how do you do.’
The moment people aren’t saying mean things about you is the moment you stop mattering. That’s why former pros who used to despise the media eventually come scuttling back, pushing cheap energy drinks or looking to catch on as an analyst somewhere. Too late, they have learned Oscar Wilde’s rule about the only thing worse than being talked about.
Fighting this reality sends only one signal – that you are not a serious person.
The important word in the formulation ‘professional sports’ isn’t sports. Any dingdong with a few bucks can buy a team. Running it professionally is the trick.
Going around losing your mind because someone you don’t know wrote something that ticked you off is not professional. It’s not even amateur. It is, as ballplayers say, bush.
In baseball, someone who is bush is someone who doesn’t understand the unwritten rules, and as a result, cannot control themselves. They react in ways that put them outside the norms of conduct, and bring the group into disrepute. There is no deeper insult.
Objectively, the Vancouver Canucks are the worst team in hockey. That’s okay. Someone has to be.
But in their comportment, the Canucks are also bush. There’s no excuse to explain that away, and no cure for it.