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Jeff Halperin

Jeff Halperin

Tag Archives: Ottawa Senators

Leafs and senators: sens players, fans, and writers are soft

08 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by jdhalperin in Sports

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Battle of Ontario, National Post, Ottawa Senators, sens fans are soft, Toronto Maple Leafs, Wayne Scanlan

As the Leafs move up in the standings (last night’s aberration notwithstanding) and the Senators continue to show their true colours and lose, it seems each team’s fans are also making a parallel divergence: my last piece about the ACC needing more“fury and balls” was contrasted sharply and hilariously by Ottawa writer Wayne Scanlan in yesterday’s National Post, “who wrote about our rival needing “civility.

Scanlan takes up the cause of a “die-hard” senator fan, and season-ticket holder, who wrote to him saying she was disgusted by the behaviour of ottawa and Toronto fans, “but mostly Toronto fans.” She didn’t feel safe attending games alone, as the corridors were bedlam before and after games. “Thugs and hooligans are ruining senators games.” No. Her senators game was ruined by the senators who couldn’t handle the Leafs relentless speed, crisp and elegant passes, and bar-down snipes. If the halls were an insane asylum it was because the senators were crushed to an insane degree. 5-0! Would any die-hard fan in a rival’s building seriously keep their glee to themselves? Can this woman ask that of us?

And besides, what exactly happened? Thugs and hooligans are those who broke windows and looted stores during the G20. If there was violence at the hockey game it would surely be mentioned somewhere, as no writer excludes the main story from their story. It sounds like this fragile woman was upset Leaf fans were loud before and after trouncing her team. If the senators destroyed the Leafs in the ACC and I had to listen to their fans gloat, and no doubt they would, I’d be in despair too. But I’d blame it on the Leafs. Fans all want to cheer and brag and gloat, but it’s impossible when you lose. So while I understand perfectly well this woman’s misery, I hope she continues to suffer it for years unabated.

This “die-hard fan” should save her disgust for her team. As their losing continues she will need all the reserve she can get.

But why did a writer take up this woman’s cause? He writes, “can both sides of this Battle of Ontario clash please grow up enough to lift this debate to the high school level?” What “debate?” We hate your team, you hate ours. The players debate who is best by playing, and we respond with cheers and boos.

Scanlan is sneaky: he spends the first half of his article praising alfredsson without ever qualifying Leaf fans’ hatred. It’s disingenuous to posture like alfredsson’s booing doesn’t have origins in a catalogue of historical provocations. Yet he uses highly charged words without  ever describing what Leaf fans did wrong.

And, what’s childish is the Sens’ fans desperate grasp at symmetry, who, without a villain to offset all theirs, “mercilessly” boo Lupul, who has never done anything to deserve their ire aside from score goals.

Scanlan speculates that Leaf fans were in payback mode, avenging senator fans “behaving badly” during the all-star fantasy draft. Yes, the relentless booing, however predictable and banal, had to be innocuously redressed in the same terms–by booing back. All standard fare, and anything but surprising. But what really got Leaf fans, and what Scanlan scandalously leaves unacknowledged (omitted?) is the senator fan who suggested during the all-star fantasy draft that Lupul’s team should select Wade Belak, the ex-Leaf who was found dead in a hotel room last summer. This vile, morally indefensible outburst, more than any booing or juvenile “Leafs Suck” video created and screened by the organization, was a new low for senator fans, a group never exactly held in great esteem.

To be sure, that person was an idiot and wasn’t acting as the team’s official representative. No doubt most senator fans, Scanlan included, would distance themselves from this moron. But Scanlan’s plea for increased civility between the teams’ fans shouldn’t leave such an atrocious breach of basic decency unacknowledged. Either this is negligence or bias.

Anyway, to complain about Leaf fans cheering on their team and booing their hated rival is totally futile. Not only is this not news, but, as I argued just before reading this article, hockey arenas are the rabid hockey fan’s should natural habitat, and nobody should be told how to pray in their temple. Also revealing, while the Leafs proudly exalt “truculence, belligerence and a high threshold for pain”, die-hard senator fans submit tear filled letters about the volume of their arena’s corridors causing them high anxiety. Their writers apparently sympathize. 

The last thing I’d like is to relieve senator fans of their misery, but can they lend to us for our home games these detested Leaf fans to teach ours how to act?

That would be civil.

Confession: My Experience As a Racist (a hockey story)

29 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by jdhalperin in Comedy, Sports

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alfredsson spezza, NHL, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs

From a young age, Canadians are conditioned to revile racists.  We look back on American slavery and wonder how life was really like that.  We bemoan contemporary racism and wonder if the world will ever become truly egalitarian. I’m a pretty decent guy, but I know from personal experience that one aspect of my Canadian upbringing instilled in me a burning hatred for an identifiable group of people and wished nothing for them but the wrath of hell. I’m talking about the Ottawa Senators and their fans.

Ten years ago, if you had asked me if all Sens fans had horns and hoofed feet, I’d have said “no”, but I’d have given them no other benefit of the doubt.  I couldn’t be sure Sens fans even existed: I had never seen one in real life, and even on TV their arena was filled with Leaf fans loudly booing whenever alfredsson (that gutless puke) touched the puck. I had no reason on earth to believe somebody actually liked that team, yet I hated that theoretical person all the same. When the Senators signed a player, I hated him overnight.  This went on unchecked for years, as my friends were just as racist.

My first encounter with an actual flesh-and-blood Senator fan happened in 2003, while my hate was at a late stage of maturation.  Though I didn’t expect a Sens fan to behave with civility or dignity (these concepts utterly foreign to the organization) I behaved well and the meeting didn’t end in carnage, though it started off rocky.  I moved into my dorm during first year university, and immediately put up my Leafs’ flag when in walked my neighbour.

“Nice to meet you. Hey, why are you putting up that piece of shit?”

“Where are you from…neighbour?”

“Ottawa.”

Just like that. He didn’t seem to be suffering any certifiable mental condition detectable at first glance, so I looked again. Still nothing.  Maybe something was wrong in his frontal lobes, but he looked like a normal human being.

Over the year, I developed a friendship with this curious species fuelled by intense rivalry and beer.  To be sure, however amiable, a part of me hated a part of him.  We shared laughs and violent shouting matches in equal measure.  But like mushrooms after a rainstorm, more Sens fans appeared. It took a year among their kind to realise that, in actual fact, Senator fans are people.  For years, I dehumanized their fans and their players (sometimes fairly), but the sample of fans I met turned out to be good Canadian boys who simply had the severe misfortune of growing up in Ottawa.  I had to admit: my neighbour, and others of his race, were decent.

The roster still comprised soulless guttersnipes, but I was racially more sensitive and newly convinced my hatred wasn’t blinding. I had reversed my all encompassing hate and learned to give a fair appraisal of the team. “Volchenkov can block a shot.”  Wholly unbiased now, my opinion was fair, balanced and commendable.  I had reformed and was tremendously capable of praise when it was warranted…it just wasn’t.  That year, following another epic post season Senator collapse, the Leafs eliminated the hated rival for the fourth time. 4/4. Those who remember the game see Lalime clearly in their mind’s eye. Ahh, glory days!

Meeting Senator fans has enabled me to gain perspective on a disturbing time in my personal history, but my racism was of a variety that I suspect all Canadian hockey fans have to some degree.  Still, I look back on these years of unbridled hate with regret. I am grateful for the contact I had with good people who gave me a chance to reform.  Now I can view them as dignified human beings, and they have made me a better person for it.  That said, I do have some final observations:

Chris Neil is a cheapshot artist who seriously looks inbred.

On five occasions, Jason Spezza has contaminated out heroic National team by failing to win gold even once.

Despite just yesterday writing a lengthy argument for unequivocal free speech, I’m afraid of what I’ll put into print if I candidly write about daniella alfredsson [sic]. I have not cooled one bit after his vicious hit from behind on Tucker from game 5, 2002. He should still be suspended without pay.

Prediction: the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Win All 82 Regular Season Games

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by jdhalperin in Comedy, Sports

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NHL hockey, Ottawa Senators, Phil Kessel, Toronto Maple Leafs

Is any NHL team capable of beating the Toronto Maple Leafs? After last night’s game, the answer is a resounding “no,” as the Leafs have proven that they can win in every way situation: shutout domination; annihilating their opponent, then barely hanging on; the come from behind victory.  This edition of the Leafs is literally unstoppable.

The defence has been poised and fearless, readily entering into the offensive attack while managing to scare the daylights out of opposing forwards, particularly those from France.  Woody Allen said 90% of life was just showing up: thanks to Phil Kessel, this is true for our other forwards.  I could describe Kessel’s domination by comparing his speed to Mogilny or his exploits to Achilles, but the damage he’s wrought to opponents is recorded authoritatively by the league statisticians: Phil leads the NHL in goals, points, and plus minus (a distinction shared with Phaneuf, that ransacking enthusiast).  Doubly impressive, Kessel’s managing to do all this with only one testicle.

The Maple Leafs are undefeated both at home (3-0-0) and on the road (0-0-0). At this rate, statistically speaking, we are heading for a perfect 82 win season. This would definitely be a triumph for a team that has failed to make the playoffs since the lockout. But in my opinion there will be doubters: “Reimer will suffer the sophomore jinx” (nah, he prays successfully to Jesus all the time); “Kessel is streaky and he’ll have another fourteen game slump” (no he won’t, how dare you!); “Bozak is a third line centre on your first line” (he’s been improving his faceoffs all summer…); “wait, you’ve only played three games” (hardly the leafs’ fault).  Be assured, these critics, depraved Senator fans, know nothing about hockey: they’re fans of a team who passed on a young Chris Pronger (prototypical defensive bully), Paul Kariya (989 pts), Jason Arnott (907 pts), preferring Daigle instead (umm…ya).  We’ve beat them four times in four playoffs. Currently sitting 1-4, the Sens have no shot at a perfect season like us.  Leaf doubters of this variety and others can all be thoroughly ignored.

But it must be said, we’re not out of the woods just yet. A bigger question remains to be seen: can the momentum from mission 82W carry over to Mission 16W?

As ever, we have no reason for doubt.

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