Are we truly a "knowledgeable" fanbase?

[Industrious1]

Lived in Northern BC and all over Alberta for most of my life. I find the fans to be more or less comparable in hockey knowledge. Fans in MH are not more knowledgeable than any others I've encountered, but they certainly support their team(s), which I respect.

The one exception is that Oilers fans (these days) tend to be a lot more fatalistic when it comes to their team. Flames and 'Nucks fans are a proud bunch that are looking to the future with great anticipation, whereas many Oil supporters I chat up don't even want to talk about their club. Kind of strange but I understand with how things have gone with Lowe and company running things.

Worked for a small amount of time in southern Manitoba, so I can't really say definitively, but in my experience the fans over there are diehards (and yet the team still moved, must have been a different breed back in the day).....but I wouldn't say they "know" any more than anyone else when it comes to the nuts and bolts of hockey.

Overall, seems to be a wash. It's a boring answer and one that will not please anyone looking for some nice soundbite to quote and rant on, but there it is. Guess we will all just have to tolerate each other and try to respect what each individual brings to the table, after all...we are all just fans when it comes right down to it.

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

Here's a new question.

If you believe that you are more knowledgeable then do you believe that automatically makes you a better fan?

Being a fan has nothing to do with being more or less knowledgeable.

A person is either knowledgeable or they aren't. There are degrees for sure.

Being a fan is different. If a person cheers for a team they are a fan. They might be a pessimistic fan or a rational fan or an optimistic fan but they are a fan. Those things don't change how much they know about the game.

[He-Lord]

Considering how many stupid people like to roam these boards, it doesn't help. But people who actually have some intelligence would not look at them and say they represent all of us. So it says a lot of other fans when they make assumptions and generalizations about us when interacting with a few people.

[riley57]

I try not to generalize fanbases or judge a team by their 'knowledge' or lack thereof. Sure, if I meet a Calgary fan I say, I sympathize. But I don't call out their knowledge of the game. Certainly, I think the Canucks fanbase and certainly the CDC is guilty of being a little... Quick to speak.

I've met a lot of hockey fans, and being a young guy I still have in my rearview mirror a kid who thought he knew everything but didn't. New fans will voice their opinion, right or wrong, but what are we to judge? We should be happy that locals from Vancouver are passionate and vocal about their hockey. Because over awhile, they'll learn more about the game. The best thing to do is bite your tongue and tell them how they could think over an extra angle to their argument.

Anyway. I'm going on a rant. I think there is a lot of new hockey fans to the market after a lot of success in the past few years. That may make us as a majority not 'as knowledgable'. Really, the only problem I see in that is that the people writing about the Canucks make stupid points to draw the majority of the fanbase to their writing. For me, I enjoy seeing the growth of hockey. So the argument, whether A or B is truely the answer, I think is moot. Just my opinion.

[King_Canuckian]

Well, there are different ways a fanbase can be knowledgeable about certain facets of hockey.

- The rules

- Players for our team

- Players for other teams

- Prospects

- Junior players

- How to play the game

And THEN are you comparing to other fanbases?

On the whole, I'd say the more rabid/bandwagon-y the fanbase, the less knowledgeable they are, so to answer the original question - are we a knowledgeable fanbase, I'd say no.

[Hugemanskost]

Am I the only one kind of excited to see this team become a bottom feeder?

I guess for me its exciting in a way since I have NEVER experience an era when the Canucks were considered terrible. I started following The Canucks during the 1991 - 1992 season and, at the time, Bure made watching the Canucks exciting. Then in 1994 I moved to a part of the world where Hockey was non-existent so for almost 15 years I was out of the dark for Hockey until the Internet made it accessible again. I started following hockey again around 2009 when the team was great. So this is the first time I am experincing the team being considered "bad"

So yeah looking forward to a period of "badness"

Uhhhh... Keenan / Messier Era says, "Hello". Some bad teams then, for sure.

[Puck'nAnimal]

To those who say that "access to hockey" for the small-town folks...makes them more knowledgeable in hockey... here's a thought for you. Just so happens that small towns are usually in places where "water freezes during the winter"...thus access to "frozen water" that you can skate on happens to be plentiful at that certain time of the year - thereby fostering the illusory idea that you are more "knowledgeable in hockey". Those of us in the Southern half of Canada have to resort to hanging out at ice-rinks. ~dripping sarcasm~ "There're dumb ones everywhere...Bubba..."

I've seen a few people in the Greater Vancouver area that are pretty damned knowledgeable in hockey and that's usually from talking to them about the finer points of the game at the rink and our assessing our minor hockey teams strengths and weaknesses as far as playing the game and not just jawing about Canuck rosters. My son plays minor hockey so I get a big dose of "watching hockey...at the ground level watching the ebb and flow of the game" day in and day out.

#16 (Surrey Leafs) - saying a few friendly words to tussle with a Surrey Sharks player.

(yeah, my son's the one with the Canuck color socks) Is this "effective zone coverage"? It looks more like he's chasing the opposing team's forward (late positioning) in this tryout scrimmage.

Anybody who plays hockey or has to shoot hockey (as a photographer) knows that there are ebbs and flows in the action of the game. You need to know the game in order to be in the right position to get the shots. And you get to know the intuitive feeling of who's trying hard and who's checked out (in their mind) in the game. That's why we're always griping about "who isn't playing hard" when it comes to Canucks games because those of us who have been exposed to the game know who isn't giving 100%.

It's at the minor hockey levels that young players learn about defensive zone coverage and attacking zones. They learn what works, what doesn't and as they progress from peewee through junior, they learn to position themselves correctly. I've seen defensive zone collapses which end up more often than not with the puck in the net at the minor hockey league level; failure to stop a two man attack at the blue line, attacking zone puck cough-ups that have ended up being taken down the length of the ice because the defense was stuck out of position because they jumped up to the attack and were caught up-ice when they should have been hanging back. I've seen a 5'10" peewee winger split the two man defense like a knife cutting through butter and even though the defense tried to muscle him off the puck, they couldn't due to the fact that he was at least 10 lbs heavier and a foot taller than the players that they had stuck on defensive corps duties. All they were...in effectiveness...in stopping his forward charge was about the effectiveness of pylons. And that is the essence of a power forward, the ability to muscle other players off you while keeping puck possession and be able to drive to the net no matter what part of the attacking zone you're on.

I love my son, and I'd like to think he's pretty darned good at hockey, but there are times that I've seen him mentally check out of a game and "float". And I've told him, that if he has NHL aspirations (which he has), that he needs to give 110% 100% of the game. He occasionally comments about how sometimes I come home with no photos of him in a game and I tell him... "Sorry...but I didn't see that you were checked into the game. If you were, you'd be battling for the puck when the attacking player was in your defensive zone. You're a defenseman - you need to be ready to effectively zone coverage your assigned area..." If you mentally check out you're not effective.

So yeah...I live and breathe hockey, just like my son (though photography is my first love). In the Asian community (I'm Japanese-Canadian) hockey isn't big but there is a market share that is small but growing. To really have a knowledge of the game, you have to study it; you have to experience it. But I think that there is room for casual fans of the game as well, so you really can't say that the fanbase and opinions should be restricted to those who are "knowledgeable about the game".

[higgyfan]

Yes and no...

but certainly a navel gazing fanbase.

[smithers joe]

i've watched the canucks since they were in the pcl and the six team nhl before that...i've coached minor hockey for 12 years to go along with 22 years of coaching minor baseball....like other fans, i have opinions...my opinions are not fact, just my opinions..

i have never coached. played or managed an nhl team, so i can't really speak from any semblance of fact....

will i ever see the cup come to vancouver?.....probably not, but i find the entertainment, win or lose, a great way to spend the winter...i have enjoyed the canucks from kurtenback to snepts; smyl to reinhart; linden to naslund and from the sedins to ?

i agree, we are passionate which isn't saying we aren't knowledgeable....but our knowledge isn't always based in reality...

i can't believe a knowledgeable hockey fan would treat anyone on their team with disrespect...question what they are doing certainly but calling them bums or losers is just so wrong from my chair in front of the tv.

[Bure010]

most canuck fans are knowledgable about the Canucks

however i've encountered TONS of Canuck fans who literally know nothing about hockey outside of this organization, except for stuff like knowing who Crosby and Toews are

[ThaBestPlaceOnEarth]

Canucks fans are very knowledgeable but we tend draw vastly different conclusions from each other when that knowledge is combined with individual opinion to create an outlook. An average Canucks fan will know a ton about the players and the team and the league in general but their opinion on any one of those could be anywhere on the map. With most fanbases, they love this guy, they hate that guy, they want executive X fired but other guy Y retained, they think such-and-such a move would be great. With the Canucks it's completely all over the place, ask ten people and you'll get twelve different outlooks. Filter that through a relentlessly negative local media environment and the fact that the city is socked in by cloud cover October through mid-April and nobody is getting any delicious sunlight, that's how you end up with a fanbase that, while individually knowledgeable, is collectively the worst kind of manic-depressive.