Are The Vancouver Canucks The Most Hated Team In Sports?

There’s just something about the Vancouver Canucks that gets the majority of hockey fans all fired up. And not in a good way. Is it their fans? Is it the man behind the bench? Or the players on the ice? Probably a combination of all of them. There just isn’t very much that is actually redeeming about this team.

The fan nonsense is self explanatory. Whether it’s their rioting of epic proportions or their scathing fans that lack any sort of filter, they’re a fanbase that has been tarnished in recent years. That’s not to say there aren’t good ones. But they are far outweighed by the bad, as is the case with almost any fanbase (Philadelphia).

But it’s the team on the ice that leads this team to carry around the reputation that they currently have as the scum of the NHL. From the man behind the bench, Alain Vigneault, who walks around cologned in arrogance, to the Olympic-quality of the dives throughout the lineup, this team just simply is not likable.

Take Tuesday night, for instance. Jannik Hansen drops an elbow on the back of the head of Marian Hossa. While there may have been a play for the puck there, it was pretty clear upon replay that there wasn’t an attempt to grab the puck. And Hansen is one of the good ones.

Tuesday’s game was also a tilt that also featured another diving penalty against Ryan Kesler. In case you were wondering, water is still wet. Seriously, Greg Louganis has nothing on this guy.

Alex Burrows has pulled hair in a fight and has used his mouth as a weapon, biting Patrice Bergeron in a playoff game back in 2011. This is a team that also employs the likes of Kevin Bieksa, Maxim Lapierre, and Aaron Volpatti. Just a wonderful batch of quality characters. And by ‘quality’ I mean potentially the greatest collection of knuckleheads the world has ever seen.

In fact, the most redeeming thing about this team might be Roberto Luongo. The embattled goaltender has ridden a hot start and an extremely popular Twitter account (@strombone1) to regain some of the love that he has lost in Vancouver in recent years. Which will help his new city to accept him with open arms when he is eventually traded.

The thing is, the Canucks and their fans seem to have no idea why all of this vitriol heads in their general direction. Looking at the roster and some of the incidents on the ice over the course of the past few seasons, it shouldn’t be difficult to figure out. Really, all they need to do is take a good long look in the mirror.