29 Teams We Hate: Carolina Hurricanes

Full disclosure: my personal feelings towards the Carolina Hurricanes veer more towards apathy than hate.

But if apathy is the opposite of love, then that's worse, right?

Maybe we should call this series "29 Teams We Don't Give A Damn About."

But I digress.

For the purpose of this post, I thought of a few reasons why we at Chowder hate the Carolina Hurricanes, and a funny thing happened along the way. For the following four reasons, I think I might straight up (but not really) hate this team.

First, let's take it back to the ancient past, meaning a few years before I was born (since, at 32, I'm kind of old.) Back in the 1970s, a team known as the New England Whalers was born, and actually shared the Boston Garden with the Bruins for a few years. The team moved to Hartford in 1974, and was admitted to the NHL in 1979. The Whalers largely floundered as an NHL franchise, and the Bruins in particular dominated with a record of 69–37–12. The two teams played a memorable seven game series in 1990, which the Bruins won on the strength of Andy Moog's goaltending.

The rivalry, however, has nothing to do with why we hate the current incarnation of the franchise. The real problem is that when the team moved south in the mid-90s, hockey fans were robbed of the single greatest logo in the history of hockey. The famous green 'W', gray 'H' and blue whale tail is quite simply a piece of art, and its replacement - the black, red and white toilet swirl - is nothing but a hideous stain on the landscape of the NHL.

For that reason alone, I hate the Carolina Hurricanes and can barely bring myself to set my eyes upon them.

To put a more current spin on things, let's talk about 2009. The Bruins and Hurricanes met in the second round of the playoffs that year. I was living in Scotland at the time, and had to stream the games on TSN On Demand during the morning after the game. What I remember most clearly is the incessant commentary about the Hurricanes trying to get Eric Staal away from Zdeno Chara, which was hate-worthy in and of itself, albeit towards another subject. (*cough* former Whalers coach Pierre McGuire *cough*)

But the blood really boils when I think about how Scott Walker decided that he'd score his first career playoff goal in overtime of Game 7. This kept the Bruins from advancing to a Eastern Conference Finals match up against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and to add insult to injury, the Canes went on to get swept.

Oh, and Scott Walker is now the coach of the OHL team in my city, just to rub it in my face.

In today's NHL, the biggest reason to hate the Hurricanes is the bogus narrative that tells us we're supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about the brothers Staal. You know, the guys that somehow managed to survive the barren wasteland of Thunder Bay and have been reunited in Raleigh. The good Ontario boys who play the game the right way and deserve our admiration and respect blah blah blah.

Screw that.

From a Bruins perspective, we want our hockey brothers to stymie one another and not help each other out on the PK.

And finally, there's this incident from just this past Monday.

Growing the game.... One person at a time. pic.twitter.com/JrlENzv4eU

— Jeff Skinner (@JeffSkinner) September 16, 2013

Enough said.