Don’t hate on Canadians

Alright Philadelphia, you can come out of the corner. Punishment is over, for now at least…. Alright Philadelphia, you can come out of the corner. Punishment is over, for now at least. Someone else is going into time out now, and they’re all the way on the other side of the country.

Philly fans are notorious for their uncanny knack for booing anything that moves. Whether it be very high and capable draft picks, like Donavon McNabb at the 1999 NFL Draft, or jolly ole St. Nick himself, Philly fanatics are not afraid to show their displeasure and while it is often annoying, it is usually not harmful.

But I would have to guess that even Philadelphia observers have their limits, something I’m not positive we can say about the folks out in San Jose, California.

Picture this. You’re at a San Jose Sharks playoff game — I know, I know, it’s hard to imagine but just bear with me here — and pretend like you still care about the NHL Playoffs. Even as the five seed, your Sharks are still the highest-ranked team left in the wild, wild Western Conference, where the entire bracket has literally been turned upside down.

It’s no picnic, though, as your team is in a dogfight with eighth-seeded Edmonton in the best-of-seven conference semifinals. It’s game five and the series is knotted at two since your team has lost two in a row to the suddenly rejuvenated Oilers.

Dare I say, your team is locked up in a tight one with one of Canada’s finest.

The puck is about to drop, the atmosphere is sizzling. Before that, though, comes the national anthem and since you’re entertaining our friendly neighbors to the north, their anthem is played before ours.

It’s crunch time — what do you, as a San Jose Sharks fan, do?

You boo their anthem. Loud and hard.

O, Canada. O, My.

Odds are that the boos didn’t come from each of the 17,496 in attendance, but that doesn’t lessen the blame or the embarrassment. Sharks officials claim that the crowd may have been responding to a handful of Canadian fans that allegedly booed a picture of Shark star Joe Thornton prior to the American anthem during game four.

There’s a reach if I’ve ever heard one. Then again, how do you attempt to defend fourth-grade behavior anyway?

San Jose mayor Ron Gonzales issued a bland apology that tried its best to apologize to both the Oilers and essentially Canada as a whole. Still, I think both the Oilers and their fans responded best.

On the ice, Edmonton doubled up the Sharks 6-3 once the puck dropped on game five, then shut out San Jose 2-0 two days later in front of a frantic home crowd, one that welcomed the national anthem with cheers so loud that they drowned out singer Paul Lorieau.

Those cheers, however, were for the U.S. national anthem.

Now that’s class.

The game six victory put the finishing touches on a stunning turn of events as Edmonton won its fourth straight to take the series 4-2. It also propelled the Oilers into the Western Conference finals, sending the Sharks home in a stunned and hopefully embarrassed silence.

Dropping a series you clearly had control of to a team that you are clearly better than must be frustrating, and I’m sure Sharks fans could already feel this series slipping away heading into game five.

But what does booing the anthem of our neighbor to the north actually accomplish? I don’t care if it was too many beers, too much sun or the guy next to you starting it, nothing can take away from this incident’s absurdity. I’m ashamed, and that’s coming from the East Coast.

Hasn’t the NHL had a hard enough time over the last three years? It’s a tough league to sell and it is a game so difficult to market that significant rule changes were necessary just to keep the league intact. The last thing the league, and the sport, needs is a classless group of individuals pulling a stunt like this.

The real kicker is that it wasn’t even well-thought out. Ten of San Jose’s very own Sharks who were in uniform that night hail from Canada.

Think they appreciated the show of support?

“We have a lot of Canadians on our team, so that was a little disrespectful,” Thornton, the Sharks’ star forward, said.

O, Goodness. What will they think of next?

Geoff Dutelle is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. Boo him at gmd8@pitt.edu.