Did you see tons of anti-Canadian rants from Czech fans on this board this year?
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of many Canadians: they don’t seem to understand that many European fans react to what they perceive as poor behaviour from Canadian teams when they are losing or even after the end of the third period. Lots of very dirty and unnecessary violence because they can’t take that things are not going their way, like 4 or 5 Canadians hanging up on Vujtek and all beating him up at the same time because they were losing many years ago. People reacted to that behaviour, not the fact that the team was Canada. And over the years, this was a behavioral pattern that only Canada displayed, hence our reactions (at least Czech fans, I cannot speak for other European fan bases). This year Canada has shown none of that and they were received very, very well by the Czech crowd and in articles by the Czech press. It’s really as simple as that. But Canadians don’t seem to understand this explanation and seem to think there is nothing wrong with behaving like violent thugs when they are losing. Which is fine, different perspectives. Canadians complain about European diving sometimes and many European fans probably don’t agree with that, either. I have no issue with these different perspectives but it does bother ne a bit that many Canadians seem to think Czech reactions are somehow biased against Canada for no reason, rather than being reactions to specific behaviour. There is zero I’ll will towards Canadians back home, including the Canadian hockey team if they are a model of sportsmanlike conduct as they have been at this tournament.
www.iihf.com
But yeah, growing up Canada gooning it up was something you could count on when they were losing.
