In what has been an otherwise fantastic start to the National Hockey League playoffs, an incident has muddied the waters a little bit.
It happened during game three of the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers series on Apr. 18.
Exactly one week after Flyers team owner Ed Snider passed away the team played their first home game. As a way to pay their respects to their late owner the Flyers gave out wristbands that lit up as part of a special pregame ceremony to honour him.
The Flyers responded with an early goal to take their first lead of the series and things were great in Flyerland. The lead lasted less than four minutes and by the end of the second period the Flyers trailed 2-1.
The Capitals scored less than two minutes into the third period on a terrible goal and then scored again six minutes later and the route was on.
That’s when the game took a semi-expected ugly turn. One of the Flyers forwards hit a Capitals defenseman from behind into the boards in a scary scene. I will not get into the hitting from behind aspect too much since I dedicated an entire editorial in the Jan. 20 edition of the Humboldt Journal.
What happened next was even worse than the hit from behind. While the Capitals defenseman was picking himself up off the ice (thank goodness he did because the way he hit the boards he’s lucky he did not break his neck) an expected scrum ensued featuring all of the players on the ice minus the goalies and interestingly enough the players that did the hitting.
During the scrum angry Flyers fans began littering the ice with the bracelets that were handed out in honour of the late owner. Some of those bracelets even hit the poor player that was just getting off the ice. And of course, after the public address announcer in Philadelphia asked the fans to stop throwing items on the ice or the team would receive a penalty it just incensed the fans and caused more to throw their bracelets on the ice.
When the referees finally separated the players and assessed the appropriate penalties they also assessed one to the Flyers for delay of game thanks to their fans throwing the bracelets on the ice.
The fans reaction?
They cheered. They were proud of themselves for throwing the bracelets on the ice resulting in a penalty to their hometown team. The act is one thing but to cheer the result afterwards is completely another.
I was talking to one of my friends about the incident afterwards and I chalked it up as a typical sports reaction.
I pointed out that Blue Jays fans littered the field with beer cans last fall during game five of the American League Championship Series first because a bad break cost the Jays and then when a homerun gave the Jays the lead.
Or that the Vancouver Canucks fans destroyed the city after their team got shutout in game seven of the Stanley Cup Final in 2011.
Or that Saskatoon rioted after the Blue Jays won the 1993 World Series.
These things happen in sports all the time, it is almost an expected reaction.
He made a good point though. Why should we come to expect people to act in such a crazy and erratic way?
We should not.
But more than that why should we allow sports fans to blatantly disrespect the memory of the man who was responsible for bringing the organization to Philadelphia?
That we should not do either. It is absolutely sad that the fans of Philadelphia chose to voice their displeasure in such a distasteful way.
When you go to a hockey game and receive a free giveaway they are intended to be kept as a keepsake from the game.
When I went to Ottawa Senators games during my younger years I received all kinds of free giveaways as part of being there.
I have playoff towels, mini Stanley cups, posters, thunder sticks, pom poms, pucks and foam swords among others. Never once would I have ever considered throwing it on the ice. First because it really is not an acceptable reaction regardless of the situation and second because those are great items that I still love to have to this day.
Now I admit, the teams are opening themselves up to this kind of problem by handing out free giveaways during the game but fans should know better than to use them as projectiles.
It has brought unnecessarily bad publicity to both the Flyers organization and the National Hockey League and I hope both Flyers fans and fans from teams around the NHL learn from this poor choice and do not repeat it again.
