I notice so many Devil fans hate the Flyers...I don't get it? I've never hated the Flyers actually like a lot of their players over the years too. Mark Howe, Rick Tocket, Tim Kerr, Keith Acton...I liked a lot of those guys
My Rangers hate know no bounds.
Pittsburgh is a distant 2nd
Edmonton - Buffalo - Pittsburgh for tank reasons. And that one year Buffalo was good recently, before they lost Drury and Briere their fans were insufferable.
Chicago another tank to bandwagon fandom...Can't stand that.
I don't conflate hating the (team's) fanbase with hating the roster. Among their current roster I like Couturier, Voracek, and Gost so I don't hate all their players at any given time but I DO hate the fanbase. So by extension I must also hate on the flyers. I even kinda like NoWorth (Neuvirth), he made progress this year and at times looked awfully sharp earlier this season.
But back to the hate...Part of the difference is I'm down in south jersey, which is practically no man's land for a devils fan. See down here if you don't hate the flyers, their fanbase will MAKE you hate them in time due to the venom they harbor for the devils and anything 'jersey' in general. The rivalry has cooled in recent years but it's always simmering.
Philly has a superiority complex when it comes to anything 'Jersey' so being cup-less for 40 years while seeing mickey mouse eventually go all the way a few times created some serious resentment. Particularly since two of those cups were at the expense of philly in the ECF. In particular though I think two postseason matchups and a hit heard around the hockey world made flyers fans hate njd fans forever. Like cobra and mongoose, the survival of one is dependent on the demise of the other. Same could be said of rangers obviously, but since my location is down south I'm around WAY more flyers fans...
95 ECF
00 ECF (they STILL can't get over this one, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory after devs were down 3-1)
And then yeah there's that hit I mentioned...
So my hate for the flyers has more to do with wanting to see their fans get griefed whenever possible more so than a hate for whatever roster they might be rolling at a point in time. Although obviously guys like gudas or rinaldo or hate-worthy no matter where they play. But then I hate the player, not the whole of boston for taking him in.
Now with regard to the broad street bully thing...I find that kind of sad these days because I know lots of flyers fans and some still like to embrace that persona like it's a thing. The difference is, they are not...NOT hockey fans, they're merely fans of the flyers. And because they're not fans of hockey they have no clue about the game. Indeed I often know more about what's going on with their team and roster than they do, so yeah that's sad. Hell even one of my best friends is a flyers fan and we bought him club box tickets to the mid-february game for his birthday. Too bad devils ruined it a little wining in OT.
By the way WFC is probably the only place you'll find anyone in devils red down here out in public.
That game in philly was gratifying to me because 1) the grief and 2) we owed it to them because I was at that disappointing OT loss to flyers earlier this season in OUR house and boy did that suck! Came back to an exciting 3-3 late to force OT just to lose on a crap breakaway.
Philly fans in general are bitter, the eagles saw to that
And wow those sixers
The phillies have been circling the drain past few years too
