We present to you a new series explaining exactly why particular members of the Boston Bruins are the absolute worst, in no particular order:
It is not an uncommon thought that Boston-based sports fans are the worst in the world, but while many fans in any city are obnoxious and difficult to be around, I, as a lifelong resident of the greater Boston area, have had occasion to run elbows with these particularly mutant-like dimwits who support the city's local teams entirely too often and can therefore tell you that Bruins fans in particular are of a rather sickening breed.
Celtics fans barely rate on the scale of awfulness because while they are proud and enduring Massholes to their cores, they also seem to be smallest in number around the city these days, having only cropped up once again for a few years at the height of the Pierce/Garnett/Allen dominance; and even then it didn't seem all that bad in comparison with the rest of the better-supported sports in the city.
Red Sox fans are obviously unctuous in many ways, largely due to their team having won two World Series in the last decade, but theirs is a somewhat subdued kind of distastefulness brought on, one suspects, as a result of decades of well-earned self-loathing and existential crises. It turns out that 86 years will indeed do a but to smooth out the rougher edges of a fanbase's collective personality.
Patriots fans were, especially in the early part of the last decade when they won all those Super Bowls, nearly vomitous to deal with because of their entitlement and ongoing belief that anyone who did not lavish praise upon and lay palms at the feet of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady were inherently being disrespectful of their heroes, and would have to answer for their crimes of not thinking they were the greatest pair ever to grace athletics, professional and otherwise.
But then, around the time Marc Savard had his career ended by Matt Cooke, the way-out sleeper pick to usurp the throne of hideously awful sports fans ascended to a throne they'd long since abdicated. Boston Bruins fans became, in near record time, completely unbearable (if you'll forgive the pun).
A representative example:
Two years ago my friend and I went to a midweek Bruins/Rangers game and, unfortunately for us, had seats in the balcony, where the lowest of these low beasts mill about in their thousands. Well before warmups had even started, a group of five or six guys in their mid-40s were bragging to no one in particular about how they had gone to a bar and gotten annihilated on "Cuay-ahvo."
They spent much of the time before puck drop arguing about the plot points of some movie (Back to the Future, I think) and lamenting that they would look up whatever the point of contention was if only they had a smartphone at their disposal. Alas, they merely had, and I quote, "gayphones," with gay presumably being the opposite of smart. The gay slurs only intensified as the game began and then progressed, with the Rangers building a sizable lead even as their hosts outshot them dramatically. I believe the game ended a 4-0 final with Henrik Lundqvist -- a "Euripean queeah" -- picking up a 40-something save shutout. These fellows didn't see that end result through to its completion, however, as one of them had vomited in the aisle and they left of their own accord somewhere around the Rangers' third goal.
Now, perhaps you might say to me that it is wildly unfair to characterize an entire fanbase as detestable on the basis of how a handful of repellent drunk, middle-aged homophobes. To which I would say you are normally correct but this is the kind of fan-punching, know-nothing nonsense you encounter with greater frequency the closer you get to the top of the upper bowl. Even in sections normally reserved for season ticket holders, four rows up from the glass, I've heard it bemoaned the Milan "Lookitch" was having a bad game, during a game for which he was out with an injury. One need only search YouTube for "Bruins fan" to see entire bathrooms chanting "faggot" at people in visiting teams' jerseys and confronting otherwise innocent people to understand exactly where they're coming from. Earlier this year the Bruins played their AHL counterparts in a preseason scrimmage, and because I didn't cheer for a Bruins goal, the nice fellow next to me asked if I was gay in the Cam Janssen-est terms possible.
Are all Bruins supporters this vile? Of course not. Are enough of them like this that anything that brings the entire fanbase bad feeling should be celebrated? Obviously.