June 14th, 1994: The Vancouver Canucks lose the Stanley Cup finals to the New York Rangers in Game 7. Riots ensue in downtown Vancouver. The mayhem causes $1.1CAN billion in damage, along with injuries to over 200 people.
June 15th, 2011: The Vancouver Canucks lose the Stanley Cup finals to the Boston Bruins in Game 7. Riots ensue in downtown Vancouver. The cost of the damages isn't known yet. Thousands of angry fans set cars on fire, smash windows of nearby buildings, and start fist fights with one another. When riot police are finally put in place, hooligans throw whatever they can find at them.
The saddest part in all of this is that three people actually died during the riots. And what did they die for exactly? Because their hockey team didn't win a game? To quote Yahoo Sport's Doug Farrar, "what a waste."
The biggest question is "why". What primal instinct causes some people to act in such stupid ways? When Sheffield United were relegated to League One last month did I go tearing through Sheffield, looting shops and starting fights? No, I took it like a man and moved on with my life. Are some people just stupid beyond belief?
What's disappointing is that these people don't understand what they're doing. In that moment they're not worried about the consequences for their actions. As the video below shows, many are smiling, dancing around, taking pictures of themselves in front of fires they've started. The blame doesn't all go on the men though. Young women were seen looting a cosmetic store for makeup.
I'm trying my best not to come off as being hollier than thou and/or a psychologist, but the anger that comes with your sports team losing a critical game has to be dealt from within. Man up. Take the pain. Use it to fuel your support for the next game or season. Think of the families that have lost a loved one because of such senseless crimes.
Just last year, Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics in a resounding success. At the time the city's mayor and police chief exerted their proudness of how the city had matured and moved on from the riots in 1994.
The only silver lining to these riots is that thousands of volunteers have already signed up to help clean up the city. Those are the kind of people that Vancouver is known for, not the drunken miscreants that populated it last night.
