The assault of a female Buffalo Sabres fan, Renee Luck, a couple of nights ago by two individuals with the money to attend Senators playoff games was no isolated incident.
There's no pretending otherwise. Here's what would be great to see. Just for starters, sports-talk radio station, The Team 1200, a huge engine behind the local Be Red rhetoric and its us-against-the-world mentality it nurtures, should begin their 27 hours of daily hockey chatter one morning by saying, "There won't be one word about the Senators until we get it out in the open why this happened in Ottawa."
Don't play it off as a couple guys who lost their cool. Answer the question: What is there in The World Of The Sens Fan that shaped this ugly incident? No NHL team we know of ever had two of its supporters beat up a woman in public -- they gave Ms. Luck a concussion, for pity's sake! -- just because she supported an out-of-town team. If it's not something specific to Ottawa or Canadian hockey fans, at least we would have a clearer picture. Does the lack of common decency toward opposing fans have anything to do with the perceived lack of respect shown on the ice?
The all-sports station and other electronic media which have tremendous reach and influence with Sens Army and Hockey Country followers should examine the mindset of local fans and its own role in possibly shaping it.
The Team is on the record as considering sports "strictly entertainment," but so long as it uses public airwaves, it has some social responsibility. That's why it can't ignore that small element in the Hockey Country culture that believes lashing out at other teams and their fans is OK, which was evidently present the other night when Luck and another young woman, Kristin Brown, were set upon in the Scotiabank Place concourse.
Examples of twisted fan behaviour have long been present in Sens fan culture: The Leafs Suck shirts (printed by The Team) from a few years ago that you still spot around town; the one idiot who shows up for the games wearing a Leafs sweater with the crest X'd out; the scoreboard incident that evoked the tragic loss Montreal GM Bob Gainey had recently suffered; the morning radio host who got fired for making jokes about Tie Domi beating his then-wife. Even one Team 1200 personality posting video online of him burning a Pittsburgh Penguins cap earlier in the playoffs no longer seems innocuous. (It's still lame, though.)
FRINGE, BUT NEVERTHELESS
There's always been this fringe -- let's stress that it's a fringe -- of so-called Senators fans who get off on running down the opposition. The hockey club and local media for too long have looked the other way, or pandered to it. It can't do that anymore, not when there's a woman in Buffalo with a concussion and who knows what emotional damage, all because she and her spouse were able and willing to spend their hard-earned money to travel and support the Buffalo Sabres. (As an aside: Does the NHL have so many fans that it can afford to have its supported treated this way?)
It's time have a long talk about what it is in Hockey Country that gave a couple of A-holes the slightest license to physically attack a woman in public. It might not be Ottawa-specific but it certainly doesn't belong here.
These as-yet-unidentified culprits are not representative of 99.99% of Senators fans, but since you can't psychologically screen every fan who enters the arena to see who's most likely to go apeshit, it means examining the local hockey fan environment, unlike Ms. Luck on Wednesday night, is fair game.
Otherwise, that well-intentioned offer of a free return trip to Ottawa that the Senators have made to Ms. Luck and her husband Sean is the shallowest of shallow gestures.
Last thing, it's a rotten shame this spoiled what is otherwise the franchise's finest hour.
Related:
Scotiabank Place offers regrets, return trip to attacked Sabres fan (Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen)
Don't Let Them Back In The Arena (KuklasKorner.com)
Pair of Senators Fans Embarrass Country (The Nexus of Assholery)
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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4 comments:
You make a number of very valid points, and the only thing I would add is that this isn't just an Ottawa thing. This could, and probably would, have happened in any other Canadian city during playoff time, when the silly season reaches its nadir. (Remember the Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver?) It's also worth noting the infamous incident that took place at the Oakland Coliseum years ago, when a New York Jets fan was beaten, thrown to the ground, and actually urinated upon by members of Raider Nation. (As my friend Shane points out, it's not a coincidence that Raider Nation and the Hell's Angels sprung from the same region.)
There's also a bit of a chicken-and-egg question with the TEAM's cringe-inducing schtick. Are they fuelling it, or just servicing it? You would argue the former, they would argue the latter. I think it is a combination of things -- general Spring fever, mob mentality, the desire to be a part of something successful, all fuelled by large doses of alcohol. Ottawa is just seeing this for the first time, but Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver have all seen it in various forms in recent years. I know it's no excuse, but this is not unique to Ottawa, and quite frankly I'm surprised it took this long for something ugly to happen.
I agree with Dennis that there is nothing particularly "Ottawa" about this. Following sport for a long time and, like Dennis, have heard of many violent incidents in many cities in many sports, going back to the Rocket Richard riot. We have nothing on the soccer violence in Europe and South America, where assaults are common,let alone other NA cities.
We should note that a police consultant just warned of potential riots here (like Vancouver) over a Cup win, if the police and city officials are not pro-active in preventing them.
As far as the Team's involvent in this, I would not know as I lost interest, and never listen to their nonsense.
I hope that they can criminally prosecute the idiots who perpetrated this crime.
OttawaFan
Dennis, you might have been the guy to write this, not me... it's 98% probably not Ottawa, but it happeneed here, so we're kind of stuck to have this discussion and the largest forum of Senators fans would be the place to do it.
No, the other Canadian cities -- Vancouver in '94, Edmonton in '06, Calgary in '04 -- had their issues. However, what happened there was mostly outside of the arena, and it never involved attacking women who were sporting the opposing team's colours, far as I know.
The gender thing is a big issue to me... remember, in Europe football crowds are often much closer to all-male than in North America. Surely the NHL doesn't want to alienate 53 percent of the population.
Reminds me of a trip to London many years ago. A big game was on and I remaked to a couple of blokes that I had never seen one and would like too. The blokes looked surprised, as I was with my then wife, and one blurted out"you would not take her, would you." Women have not gone in any numbers to soccer games in Britain for decades just for the very reason that what happened to Ms. Luck had happened to women there.They were afraid to go. So best we make an example of these bums or we could chase away female hockey fans.
There are always drunken fans or just plain "losers" who cannot control their emotions and sport fandom allows them a venue to vent their anger and fustration.
Particularly cowardly of a young male to hit a smaller woman, but violence by a lowlife against a fan will happen again, in Ottawa or elsewhere. We can only keep it under control by dealing with it harshly when the culprits are caught, and hope it does not get out of control like it did in Britain. It is good for all fans to express our disdain for these goons on every forum we can. Maybe, their fellow goons (yes there are a few more of them in Ottawa , and every city) will get the message that they only prove how pathetic they are by this kind of violence, and we will not be troubled by more of it this spring.
Big congrats to the Sens for winning the Prince of Wales trophy.
OttawaFan
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