Opinion: The rivalry with Seattle ain’t Kraken. The Boston Bruins feud is just a bruise from the past. Will a playoff run find a new subject for Canucks players and fan enmity?
A sports rivalry is something born of joy and pain, consequences and moments frozen in time.
Every meeting becomes outsized in importance relative to its regular-season counterparts, and should those rivals meet in the post-season, the world stops and the results feel either apocalyptic or utopian.
Consider Alex Burrows’ Dragon Slayer goal in 2011, which snapped the Vancouver Canucks two-season string of playoff pain against the Chicago Blackhawks.
“I’m being dead serious, this goal was the greatest moment of my life,” one fan commented under one YouTube replay of the goal, one of a literal warehouse of digital entries dedicated to the moment.
Canucks forward Ryan Kesler summed up that year’s meeting to The Athletic: “Every year we drew them in the playoffs and they drew us, and it became war. The core of our teams stayed the same, and the dislike goes up and the battles get that much more intense. To be honest, I wouldn’t rather it be anyone but them.”
It’s faded since its heyday in the late-aughts, but the scars and dopamine still linger. It’s still a rivalry.
You can say the same of the divisional meetings with the Calgary Flames, which featured broken bones, broken spirits, line brawls and nearly one between coaches, too. If familiarity breeds contempt — four regular-season meetings a year will do that — it’s why this rivalry has simmered for decades.
Then there’s Saturday night’s opponents, the Boston Bruins. It used to be the most heated feud in hockey; the image of Zdeno Chára parading the Stanley Cup around Rogers Arena in 2011 still nauseates Canucks fans. Chara contributed some bilious ipecac to that a decade later, claiming the Bruins were inspired by reports of the Canucks practising passing the Cup around after taking a 3-2 lead in the championship series.
