PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

Welcome to The Definitive Fan – The online guide from PowerPlayGoal.com to the types of fans who you’re likely to meet (or not meet) at a hockey game.
Most of these fans truly love the game, and some just have a passing interest, while others seemingly exist only to annoy others…

Fan Type #9 – The Forum Troll

Not quite what we had in mind, but… yeah

Bio:
Some people really do have a lot of time on their hands. This pathetic excuse of a fan may hate any particular team so much that they will go right out of their way to infuriate the fans of said team via a certain means on the internet, which as this fan type’s name suggests is a forum – particularly an unofficial, fan-made one for a certain team.

They will register an account, usually going with a name like “A REAL hockey fan” or “*insert team name here* suck”, and once logged in they will look for a section of the board, the one that attracts the most attention, namely discussions related to the team in question. They’ll then start a thread, filling their post with ludicrous “facts” as to why the team is a joke, why they shouldn’t exist, why their fans are all fake, why the team will be folding soon, etc., and if they are intelligent enough to make up a scenario of their own, they will claim that they’ve been to one of the team’s home games, pointing out things that are apparently wrong with the team and arena like the “fake fans” in attendance, and eventually they will finish their post. As with most typical forum trolls, they will log off and never return to their account again.

But the Forum Troll doesn’t stop there: they will sit and watch as people reply with angry or sarcastic comments, and posts saying “Please don’t feed the troll”. Forum Complainers will respond with whining about how it’s all true, regardless of how stupid and illogical the original post is. The thread will either go on for a while before it fades away in favour of other, more relevant threads related to the hockey team, or an admin will lock and/or remove it straightaway – the latter is likely to, ironically, annoy the troll, whose account will be banned and IP address blocked.

Characteristics:
How are we supposed to know what they look like behind the keyboard? They are more than likely to be male. As their name suggests they could have hideous faces and pointy ears, but we don’t know for sure…

Favourite Team:
In this case it should be their Favourite Team To Pick On. They are more likely to antagonise fans of the expansion era Sunbelt NHL franchises.

Other:
Admins usually manage to identify their IP addresses as being either from the more Northern States or from Canada. Go figure.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is the Definitive Fan.

(Credit to this guy for the photo)

Welcome to The Definitive Fan – The online guide from PowerPlayGoal.com to the types of fans who you’re likely to meet (or not meet) at a hockey game.
Some of these fans love the game, while others don’t really seem all that interested, for example:

Fan Type #8 – The Violence Hater

An example of which we’ll go into more detail later in this article

Bio:
The polar opposite of the Fights Fan. In fact, this fan type usually isn’t even a fan at all. They dislike violent sports such as Hockey, labelling it as being cruel and barbaric despite the fact that the athletes taking part have chosen to do so theirselves, and that Hockey players are usually well educated.

Violence Haters generally just don’t go to Hockey games, so have no idea as to how it plays or what the aim of the game actually is – they simply assume that it’s violent, and therefore is one of the most evil and unethical things going.

They will go out of their way to make their opinions known, with their favourite (and usually only) place to protest being the internet. They will find news related websites, usually the more generic ones that don’t belong to any particular TV channel, and find a hockey related article. They will post drivel such as “Hockey is horrible and barbaric and should be banned!”, then becoming a subject of ridicule for anyone else commenting on the article.

Characteristics:
Either gender, but more notably female – usually with no distinguishable characteristics. You won’t actually see them protesting in public because they at least know well enough that they’ll probably be laughed at.

Favourite Team:
None… well, maybe the Pittsburgh Penguins, because penguins are cute and fluffy and everyone loves them. Therefore that team isn’t violent at all, right?

Other:
One real-life example we can actually name for once is a user who responded to a question on Yahoo Answers: the user asking simply wanted to know how the fight strap in hockey jerseys work, and one user who responded decided to label all hockey fans as “low class, bloodthirsty creeps.” Oh, thanks! Real nice of you. So nice that I’m going to put a link right here for everybody to see.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is The Definitive Fan.

Welcome to The Definitive Fan – The online guide from PowerPlayGoal.com to the types of fans who you’re likely to meet (or not meet) at a hockey game.
Some of these fans clearly have a true passion for the game, others, well, they are just there for something to do.

Fan Type #6 – The Tourist

Game programs are usually a favourite piece of merchandise for tourist-type fans.

Bio:
So you have a friend who’s going on vacation, and you happen to notice that they’ve picked a city that’s home to an NHL team. Your friend may have never seen a game in their life, nor had any prior interest in the sport, so being a huge hockey fan yourself; you quickly recommend that they go see an NHL game.

Apparently going by your recommendation – although there’s no guarantee of them doing so – your friend will then attend a game, and chances are they will have enjoyed themselves. But again, there’s no guarantee. After they’ve been on vacation for however long, they will come home and you will encounter one of the following scenarios:

A: They’ll have enjoyed the game, seemingly developing a casual interest in hockey in the process. In future, they may still claim that they are a fan of one of the two teams that they saw play, usually the home team, otherwise they won’t show many, if any signs of interest, thus creating Tourist Fan Type A.

B: They’ll have really enjoyed the game, so much that they’ve picked up as much merchandise as possible, gone out of their way to learn about and cherish the history and traditions of the team, and they’ll seemingly be a fan for life (although chances are this could merely be a post-vacation stage). Don’t like the team they’ve chosen? Or are you now finding it annoying how they’re always bringing up some great event in the team’s history that they talk about as if they saw it yesterday? Well, tough, because you’ve just created Tourist Fan Type B.

Characteristics:
Well, come on. They’ve just come home with at least a jersey of their new favourite team. Or some other team memorabilia to remember their holiday by, like a game programme. Tourist Fan Type A however, will most likely seem more generic, and will have no distinguishable characteristics.

Favourite Team:
Depends on where they visit. A common choice for British Tourists for example would be the Tampa Bay Lightning, or maybe the New York Rangers.

Other:
Scenario A above will occur more commonly than B, although there may have been a few rare cases of the latter.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is The Definitive Fan.