No One Said the Playoffs Were Pretty

One of the more violent Cup finals in recent memory begins a best-of-three series tonight.

The Stanley Cup final between the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks has been a bloody, blue-collar affair, leading Bruce Arthur of the National Post to proclaim that neither team would win, if morals and not goals decided the outcome. “It’s nice to cheer for teams that you feel deserve your affection for some reason other than success alone, unless you’re the kind of person who roots for the New York Yankees or Goldman Sachs,” says Arthur. “In this Stanley Cup final, that is not nearly so easy.” Between Alex Burrows' finger-biting, Boston's endless slewfoots and taunting of said finger-biting, and Aaron Rome's late hit that hospitalized Nathan Horton, it's hardly “the kind of hockey you would take home to your parents.”

Further to that point: GQ's Jonah Keri decides that almost all of Canada and the U.S. are cheering against the Bruins, even if they're not pulling for the Canucks. “Flyers fans hate Boston. Rangers fans hate Boston. Casual hockey fans in Boise or Mobile are, at best, indifferent about Boston,” writes Keri. It doesn't help that every other pro sports franchise in Boston has won at least one championship in the past decade. Complaining about the Bruins' Cup-less drought since '72 is like somebody bemoaning that “after the three-bedroom in Tribeca, the place in the Hamptons, the kids' boarding school, the annual trips to Paris and Aruba, the four cars, and two alimonies, you've barely got enough left for that third bottle of Dom at Per Se.”

That this might be one of the hardest finals in recent memory to root for doesn't surprise the Edmonton Journal's Todd Babiak, who figures hockey hasn't grown up as much as its fans. “The 1980s' hair rock between whistles, the cold beer and new truck advertisements, the fights, the concussions, the buffoonery of Don Cherry, everything that used to be an acceptable – even charming – distraction from the beauty of the game, is mysteriously becoming ... tiresome,” he writes, claiming it's not enough for people who want “thrills, a good story, a hometown struggle against adversity, surprise, heroism, the triumph of the little guy, escape, change.” Or, maybe it's that Babiak is from Edmonton, which hasn't seen a decent season of hockey (save one miracle run in 2006) in more than 20 years.