I’ve always wanted to know what people think about me, and while the technology is almost here I get the feeling that I don’t need a listening device to know people are making fun of me for it.
As a group though, I’m sure we’d love to know what people think of Sens fans across the league, so I made that my mission. All it takes to know that Alfie is a criminal and Karlsson can’t play defence is a quick phone call with your friendly neighborhood Leafs fan, so I broadened my horizons.
I wanted to know what fans of Western teams who we rarely play or interact with think of us. As my circle of acquaintances consists of all Sens fans and one unfortunate Sabres fan, I went to HF Boards to get my answer.
I am guilty of spending too much time on those boards, but never as a poster, I prefer my online life as a lurker, so step 1 was to create an account. It turns out new users can’t create threads so I had to settle on posting in long existing forums. I chose 5 western teams that I thought would work well for my purposes. I created a quick message that I copied and posted in the appropriate places.
A little while and a warning for spam later, I had the results. The good news is people seem to like us. Yay! The general consensus is that a good coach erases all memories of recent coaches past. There were multiple comments about liking what Paul MacLean is doing a good job here despite all our injuries. There was also talk about our youth and how our future looks bright. Those comments made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It also appears that we share the title of least hatable Canadian team with the Jets. So that’s something I guess.
We aren’t completely free from hate though. In my foolishness one of the teams I asked was Minnesota, the home of the All-Star himself. There were a few posters who commented about how it’s dumb that we still hate Heatley. I’m sure they’ll come around eventually. There is also a distinct group of people who are annoyed with us. After checking my proverbial fishing lines a group of Blues fans were not happy. They confused me at first with their St. Louis movie references and then it became clear to me that they thought I was fishing for compliments, specifically about Karlsson. I guess we don’t have an amazing reputation in St. Louis, maybe it was something Redden said.
All in all I feel happy about how we are received. As long as we don’t completely over value our players or burn down our city after losing in the playoffs I think we can keep our reputation.
As a side note, if you want to find the posts and replies that I got, here’s a link to the HF Boards account I made, I’m fairly sure you can find the posts from there.
