Silver Nuggets: Being outnumbered at home is our own fault

Media made Elliott scapegoat last year, Spezza says

I was at Friday and Saturday night games and had been at many Leafs games in the past but none in the last 10 years or so and I have to say that in person it is off the charts way worse in the rink than on TV, it literally felt like we were at the ACC. It has gotten really bad and Ottawa fans should be ashamed for allowing this to happen because it is just awful to be in the home rink with very little home ice advantage or feel to it.

Here’s the thing. Leafs fans who stain Scotiabank Place go far out of their way to make complete jackasses of themselves. Are they that loud at the ACC? Nope. There is a reason the Leafs are the most hated team in the NHL (Van is second)-it’s the fans. Fans cheering for their team is great, fans going out of their way to annoy their host is another level of antagonism. MTL fans were getting pretty obnoxious themselves until they hit the skids after two playoff appearances in a row. So what do we do? Ban Leafs jerseys? Of course not but here’s my idea:
Make Leafs games super cheap so the young 20 something Sens fans can actually afford to go, and give them a free beer for wearing a Sens jersey. Mix fan pride\Leaf hatred with alcohol and shake well. Maybe if a few Leafs fans go home with a black eye they’ll learn to behave themselves next time. Beyond beating them up or childish cheering\booing contests that are tiresome after the 1st what other suggestions are there?

I have been to 3 Leafs/Sens games now. This was the first one I went to where the Sens lost. Though, that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to the Leafs fans. You still get the same 45 bus ride home with a bunch of drunk people trying to justify whatever happened in that game/season/decade/anything but playoffs.

I gotta say though, out of the 3 I have been to, there did seem to more Leafs fans this time… I don’t know if there actually was though.

I went to every TOR @ OTT playoff game in the 03 and 04 seasons and about 1/3 of all games since. In all but perhaps 2 games, the heckling from Toronto fans has been very aggressive (not just name calling and the like) and my 4 year old nephew was reduced to tears on one occasion when some fans started harassing him whilst shaking his Sens foam finger.

There was also a game in 06/07 where, from my standing-room seats at the very top, I watched a Leafs fan and his buddies get pulled from the alcohol-free family fun zone – trashed out of their minds from smuggled-in booze. The one guy pushed the small, female usher backwards towards the stairs, my sister picked up my neice and bolted with good cause, as security showed up to attempt to restrain the guy. When the COPS showed up, he slammed one of them very forcefully into the back wall and – thankfully – the other three made him pay with a face into the concrete floor. All the while, his buddies were yelling ‘fucking Ottawa pigs’ and tossed coke cups around. One cop actually had his hand on his gun handle and looked really tense. Only the two girls accompanying the guys were “behaving” but, as the the cop-assaulting jerk was dragged, kicking and yelling out the stairwell, one stated very loudly “Fucking Ottawa” as though it was the city’s fault that their buddy assaulted a cop.

That was the worst time for sure, and most likely an anomoly, but I stopped wearing Sens clothing (foam gladiator hat, signed Alfie jersey, waving a Sens flag) to those games because it’s impossible to avoid getting drinks accidentally spilled on the jersey by Leaf fans sitting behind, having my wife (she is quite petite and a threat to no one) and I pelted with peanuts and popcorn and insulted ad infinitum.

It’s not a fun place to be 0- at least in the 300s – when the Leaf fans come to town.

to offer seasons ticket holders an additional ticket for each seat they hold at a substantially reduced price, and recover the cost by raising less popular tickets by a small amount. You have a bunch of committed Senators fans with reduced priced tickets they can give to their buddies – hopefully not Leaf fans. Let’s say they had 10,000 seat holders and 1/4 took that offer – you’d see another 2,500 Senators fans in the seats which might help the optics and keep out Leaf fans.

I went as the lone Senators fan in our car. The girlfriend is a Leafs fan so we have something to tease/argue over, but she actually follows the team for a while. We picked up two other Leafs fans friends. We were in 314 and there was literally THREE other Senators fans in the five rows (including ours) around us. FOUR SENATORS FANS IN FIVE ROWS. Unbelievable.

Overall though the Leafs fans were pretty cool. I saw zero violence or pushing people around. Of course, the incessant BOOOOOOOOOOOO of anything in a Senators jersey was pretty heinous. And the standing ovations of Leafs goals made me want to bard. Even worse was the three star selections when the Leafs players got ANOTHER standing “o”.

I wonder why it is this way but I know the answer…because my friends give their season tickets to Leafs fans because they don’t want to put up with the noise. Or they give them to Habs fans for the same reasons. Or they simply don’t want to go to these games at all.
There was some douchebaggery outside wth a group of Leafs fans chanting “THIS IS OUR HOUSE!!” but overall a lot of fun.

By the way, it’s NEVER going to stop. The better the Leafs do the more fans you’ll see and so on. So people, BUY THE TICKETS AND SHOW UP! If you don’t, you’ll get what we saw Saturday, a barn full of Blue and White cheering their lungs out and drowning out the meek Senators fans in attendance.

On the bus ride home on Saturday, I had a Leafs fan lecturing me about the Sens and the likelihood that we will finish 9th or 10th and therefore be a farce. Yes, A LEAFS FAN said this to me. Pot, meet kettle. Anyway…

S7S game night for a Leafs game!

I say this because the Toronto games (and MTL to a slight degree) were the biggest reason my folks gave up their season tickets, and I’m starting to wonder if that’s pretty common from talking to some other big fans.

The Senators understandably love selling out those four games a season, but the flipside is that the TO games really tipped the balance for my folks, who were spending 4000-6000 bucks a season (esp. in playoff years) for about 7-8 seasons running (and, yes, that number is horrifying to add up).

Out of the 42, roughly a third of the games you have to buy are somewhat problematic anyways (5-6 games in 10 nights during a homestand, say, with some of the games against muh teams and then you have some nasty weather to boot). So you really want to look forward to the weekend games, which tend (or at least tended) to be rivalry games. And then you get to TO and MTL, and you get a big blast of cold water. Rowdy jerks all around you and a general feeling that your franchise sucks and that nobody cares enough to show up for it. And for this you got all excited, and put up with paying for Tuesday games against Carolina and Thursday games against the Islanders? Why not downscale to 6 or 8 games against only fun teams? (which is what they did)

I’m just really curious if the Sens have ever really done the in-depth, beyond simple surveys or simple focus group, marketing analysis that would put a price on TO-game-shittiness. It’s not clear to me that selling out some Saturday games is the home-run they might think it is if it comes at a cost of depressing the core fan-base.

to Sens games against the Habs or Leafs. They do take over the stadium, and it’s embarassing to watch them outcheer Senators fans. Fans of these two teams only get to see their teams a few times a year, so obviously they get their tickets and plan early for those games. Sens fans probably don’t make the same effort for these particular games obviously because the Leafs and Habs aren’t/have not been good teams. For years I went to these games and tried my best to be loud and have fun, but I’m too old for that now, and so rather than go watch the obnoxious Leafs or Habs fan boo the players I love so much, I just won’t go. This just goes to the point that games against these opponents are too expensive to get our rowdiest fans out, not to mention the inconvenience of getting back and forth to Scotiabank.

People think Sens fans don’t go because they can’t afford to go? I don’t buy that..

For students, etc…I understand that money is tight but the tickets aren’t THAT expensive that is precludes only the Leafs fans from purchasing tickets. I am 40 years old and vocal at our games – it doesn’t take a teenager to bring noise, it takes fans that aren’t afraid or ashamed for whatever reason to stand up and cheer for their team.

I would like to see some type of rally or whatever as well but the bottom line is that we all know people that simply say, “I won’t go to Leafs or Habs games because there are too many (other teams) fans”. It is sad and pathetic. I call out any and all fans who have this attitude and say grow up, get some backbone and root for your team.

Even with the small gathering of Sens fans last Saturday there were enough to get a decent Leafs suck chant going when prompted…we need more of that…just like the “over-rated” chants for Dion.

Just go to the games – simple.

I do agree and posted in the other thread that there is probably a significant portion of the Leafs fans who purchase mini-packs just to make sure they get a Leafs game in and even some full season ticket holders are hockey fans with a Leafs bias so on those nights they show up in blue.