Urban Vancouver

Vancouver Canucks Fan Attacks Calgary Flames Fan

By Richard Eriksson on April 8, 2004 - 10:50pm

Although he doesn't point to a news story in the weblog entry, Darren Barefoot has a photo of a Vancouver Canucks fan stomping a Calgary Flames fan after game one of the opening playoff series. I had wondered—aloud to my friends at the time—about the Calgary fans in the audience (at the beginning of the telecast, they had showed one group of Flames fans with a large banner in front of them).

there was an ugly incident in which a Canucks fan attacked somebody in a Calgary jersey. While this will be no surprise to English soccer enthusiasts, this sort of thing is rare at Canucks games. The crowd is way more white collar than it used to be, so most arguments these days are concluded by comparing bank accounts.

Rare, but not unheard of. I was at a game against the hated Colorado Avalanche where, everytime the Avalanche scored (and the Canucks were blown out in that game), a young woman would wave a large Avalanche flag. By the third or fourth goal, upset Canucks fans took it upon themselves to throw whatever they had in their hands at the fan.

Calgary's CTV affiliate CFCN has a short story about the incident, but not many details and no word on injuries or arrest. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so the cliché goes, but that's not to say that those words are accurate. Let it be recorded that my judgment upon initially seeing the photo was one of disgust, but I'm going to wait until more information is available to have a final opinion on this. The security guards who came to the man's aid should be commended for doing the right thing (which just so happened to be their job).