By Stephen Johns

Photo by Dustin Hall from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It’s that time of year again, the time when Canadians feel obligated to throw their unconditional support behind the last Canadian team playing for the Stanley Cup. This year’s bearer of “the Cup dreams of an entire nation” (as TSN’s Jennifer Hedger put it) is the Vancouver Canucks, who eliminated the St. Louis Blues in a surprisingly easy four-game sweep. (Neither of the other two Canadian playoff participants, the Montreal Canadiens or the Calgary Flames, made it out of Round #1—although at least the Flames didn’t get swept, nor did their fans litter the ice after the team was eliminated.) The question is: should Leaf fans be doing likewise?
We’ve never understood the “cheer for the last Canadian team standing” mentality, which seems symptomatic of a fragile sense of nationhood. (We know the Stanley Cup was supposed to foster Canadian unity—but that was over a hundred years ago.) Yet despite that, we’ll be rooting for Vancouver solely because of Mats Sundin. We aren’t exactly relishing the prospect—the unilateral antipathy Vancouver fans feel for the Maple Leafs is baffling, although the Vancouver Province‘s shameless publicity stunt following the Canucks’ first-round victory provided us with more than enough ammunition in return—but it’d be impossible for us to cheer against our former captain. We still feel a tremendous amount of ownership where Sundin’s concerned, as evidenced by how Toronto fans welcomed him back to the Air Canada Centre earlier this year. Sundin’s lack of a Stanley Cup championship (which, in case it needed saying again, isn’t his fault) is one of the few remaining holes in his Hall of Fame resume. It’d be great if Sundin could prove his detractors wrong once and for all, especially the ones who criticized his decision to sign for Vancouver instead of the New York Rangers last December.
Sports bigamy should be avoided at all costs: as Bill Simmons put it, “You cannot root for two teams at the same time. You cannot hedge your bets. You cannot unconditionally love two teams at the same time, when there’s a remote chance that they might go head-to-head some day.” Yet in this case it’s all right, especially since we won’t be hedging any bets this year. So go ahead: root for our wayward Swede (or for our wayward Wellwood, if for some reason you still haven’t forgiven Sundin for skipping town). Just don’t root for Vancouver because they happen to play in a Canadian city. If the tables were turned, there’s no way Vancouver fans would be cheering for Toronto—unless, of course, Trevor Linden was wearing blue and white.