I am sad. There are 4 teams playing hockey right now, and my favorite team is not one of them. I’m not angry, I’m largely over the loss, but it’s still a bummer to not watch my favorite team every other night in the playoffs. Thankfully, I’m not the only person out there who is pretty disappointed about my team getting knocked out. Even better, there are a lot of fans of other teams that – how shall we put this – did not take their team losing very well. I decided to take some time and go through comment sections of websites dedicated to teams Detroit has had various rivalries with, and boy did I ever find some fun stuff. I decided to focus on division rivals and teams Detroit’s had current/past playoff rivalries with who got knocked out of the playoffs. We’ll start with the lightweights and work our way up. If you are the type who is offended at the idea of pointing and laughing at others, you might just want to hit the back button on your browser. The rest of you, this should be fun. We’re going to be looking at our two division rivals (Lightning, Bruins) as well as a few other teams that the Wings have serious playoff history with (Avs, Penguins, Sharks).
Tampa Bay Lightning
Let’s start with a softy. Division rivals and all, but this team really had a “happy to be here” kinda feeling – both fans and the team in general. I actually think it says a lot (in a bad way) about their fanbase that the best they could come up with in vitriol and anger was this.
[Ed note: Click on any picture to enlarge]
Right, because what’s good for business in the NHL is for all playoff series to end after 4 games. Gary Bettman’s coffers have 0 interest in additional playoff game revenue. No interest in more than 1 outdoor game per season either of course. Tampa fans – are you guys new at this? You’re supposed to question the “heart” and “leadership” of your stars, scream to fire your coach, and question the purpose of life itself. Maybe the other team that was just happy to be there can at least give you an idea of what you could have done better.
Colorado Avalanche
Expectations were weirdly low for this team that won a tough division, probably because they were ridiculously lucky this season. However, that didn’t stop their fans from putting up a better performance than Tampa fans. User Hellveto puts up some A+ LiveJournal material.
I wish I could do something, anything, for hellveto, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do. It’s a sick feeling. User amit916 brings some fan anger:
Overall though, this isn’t that great of a showing from Avs fans. The rest of them mumbled stuff about “the future” and various measurements of its brightness, yadda yadda. Let’s start getting into some heavyweights.
Pittsburgh Penguins
Now we’re talking. You want hyperbolic anger? You got it. BLOOD IN THE STREETS.
If you were waiting on the “compare a millionaire being fired with murder” square on your schadenfreude bingo chart, lucky you. Turning on your team and pretending to be happy they lost? Oh yes, we have that too.
Well what do you know, I agree with a Penguins fan. I too am very happy their season is over. But I know what you guys are really here for, and that’s people turning on Sidney Crosby – the only reason the Penguins are even a good team. GOODS DELIVERED:
Clearly the C was the reason the Penguins got beat 4 times out of 7 by a team with more talent. User Bradley James McEachern brings it home for us.
I am fully supportive of anything involving throwing James Neal under the bus, seeing as Neal is what you get when you take Lucic and put him in a Penguins jersey and make him a little smaller. This is solid, and overall the Penguins fans did OK, certainly beating out the Lightning and Avs fans. However, there are true two heavyweights here in the quest for the Schadenfreude Cup, so let’s get at it.
San Jose Sharks
Chokechokechoke hahaha. Can you even imagine what the anger must be like blowing a 3-0 lead when your team has a reputation for choking every single year? The answer is no, you cannot begin to fathom it. The Red Wings have choked their way out of a few playoffs back when they spent the regular season blowing teams out every night, but at least they won Cups and stuff to make it all okay. San Jose, nada. This whole post could have just been Sharks fans, but I’m going to try to just pick a few of my favorites.
Sharks coach Todd McLellan is “useless as a coach and as a person” – ho dang, Sharks fans mean business. Saying your coach is the epitome of worthless is standard procedure, but saying his general lack of value extends to his status as a human being is the kind of thing that puts you in Hart Trophy consideration. Even better was that enough Sharks fans decided that they agreed that their coach is actually worthless as a person that they decided to make this comment green.
I think the real thing that should be keeping this guy awake at night is that his username suggests he might have the same last name as Shane Doan. Now that’s a real crime.
Top notch stuff – blaming your best players and citing things like “leadership.” Sharks fans brought their A-game. Valiant attempts all-around, but nhoj-kcirtap_nosya really brings the heat.
Good: used a lot of caps, weird punctuation, circular reasoning, nearly breaks the record for cliches/60.
Bad: doesn’t call into question the value of the human life of his coach.
So close to being a perfect score, but I give that one a 95%. Finally, our other heavyweight.
Boston Bruins
Oh yes. Let’s do this. What kind of mood are Bruins fans in? Well let’s ju- WHAT.
Best day ever.
GIVE IN TO THE HATE.
This is the same GM that engineered a team that recently won the Cup and came awfully close to winning a couple more. Also, I’m sure Blues fans are sitting at home thinking “well sure we lost in the FIRST ROUND like always but hey at least we tried at the trade deadline unlike those bums in Boston that went further than us.” My personal favorite is when one of the best players in the world plays like it, and it’s somehow his fault. Like this one:
Tuukka Rask had a sv% of .930 this season. In the playoffs he was .928. Those are both unbelievably good numbers.
The crown jewel though is indisputably this set of tears brought by Beans795, which incidentally inspired this whole borderline tasteless post.
Now THIS is a greatness. This is more tears than your mother watching A Walk To Remember. This is a Conn Smyth performance on par with Zetterberg killing the 5 on 3 against the Penguins in the 08 Cup Finals. We are all witnesses.
Who wins the Schadenfreude Cup? Vote below. Did I miss any especially weepy comments? Please link/screenshot them in the comments so we can do some more collective pointing and laughing.
Which team’s fans win the Schadenfreude Cup?
| Boston Bruins | 178 |
| Colorado Avalance | 4 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 29 |
| San Jose Sharks | 44 |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | 2 |
