A week from now, on October 6, the new NHL season will start. Kicking off the 2012 season will be the timeless match-up that sees the Toronto Maple Leafs host the Montreal Canadiens.
Most hockey fans polarize over these teams, hating at least one of them. Being a lifelong fan of the defending Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins, I straight up hate the Habs, but it’s not even the Habs I hate the most…it’s Habs fans.
Which brings me to the whole point of this post. A point I’ve been stressing to anyone who will listen to me whenever it comes up. It is a very mature and complicated concept, but one I believe to be true: Leafs fans are like dogs, Habs fans are like cats.
Seriously, you guys, have you ever had a cat? Have you ever gotten through a rough day at work or school just by thinking about all the love and affection your cat is going to shower upon you when you get home?
Ok, you might have answered “yes” to the first question but if you said anything but “fuck no” to the second question you are a liar.
Cats, like fans of the Montreal Canadiens, are just snotty little jerks. They’re spoiled and as such have expectations of how they’re supposed to be treated and anything less than that is a crime punishable by death or being shipped to Colorado.
While some of you (read: “Habs fans”) might just think I’m bitching about the Canadiens and their fans because I’m a diehard supporter of the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins let me give you an example. Just last year, during the preseason, they booed their goalie, Carey Price, off the ice in a game against the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins. And that was just the PREseason! The game didn’t even matter, but those little shits were ready to run the poor guy (who I actually kind of like) out of town on a rail. Have you ever not had your cats food waiting for it as soon as it was hungry? It was kind of like that.
Can you imagine what they would have been like if it had been a regular season game? Patrick Roy can. What if Price had waited to turn to shit until halfway through the Cup Finals like Bobby Lou did last year (against the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins)?! I can imagine the result would be like when you don’t clean out the litter box fast enough and the cat shits and pisses all over your clothes as payback. Really, Vancouver, you guys did ok and all but Montreal invented hockey riots.
Dogs on the other hand…
Dogs are blindly, stupidly loyal. You can kick a dog in the fucking head and it will come back, wagging it’s tail, and lick it’s own blood off your shoe. Kind of like…
The Leafs haven’t won a Cup in 44 years, but if you ask any Leafs fan up until the minute they’re mathematically eliminated from the playoffs (sometime mid-November) and it’s their year, and then if you ask them just after that, next year is their year. They just believe in the team no matter what the team does to them. No matter how much the Leafs break the hearts of their fans, their fans stick by them.
You’ve got to respect that.
They love the shit out of their team, and their team has Phil Kessel* on it.
* If any of you guys want to hear some hilarious/politically incorrect Phil Kessel jokes just ask.
