Interesting, a story came out about the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets who consider consider their lovable local hecklers ‘the wind beneath their wings’. Jet’s fans have been coined ‘roaring, sly and supportive’. Sounds more like a curling game but apparently Jet’s fans understand and appreciate the ‘lost art of heckling’.
The ‘lost art’? Heckling has gravitated to a more mean-spirited fan-athlete dialogue in most sport palaces as Eric Duhatschek writes in The Globe and Mail ( October 16, 2015) – “Winnipeg fans’ fervour set to take off again” (eh?). What has been missing ,according to the journalist, is the sly humour of days gone by – a more acceptable and palatable form of heckling.
Here are a few ways the Winnipeg fans taunt the opposition with cunning wit:
* When Ovechkin arrives with the Capitals, the fans chant: “Crosby’s better.”
* Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf is called “Captain Romaine” – a reference to his premature baldness…to which Getzlaf remarked ” Like, I don’t know that I’m bald?”
Perhaps the fans in Winnipeg have to root a little louder because they have the smallest arena ( only 15,294 seats) and they need to stay warm in “Winterpeg”.
Perhaps the best testament to the fans in Winnipeg is the remark by a player who claims that they’d rather play in a building where the people care what’s going on. For players it has to make life more exciting and push them to greater heights.
Here’s a look from the players’ perspective that gives you an idea of how the fans ‘ruffle the feathers’ of the other team: