Choosing a Favorite NHL Team

I have chosen an NHL team.

I was going to go through them one by one, process-of-eliminating my way down to a few select options, then choosing the one that afforded me the best opportunity at ambiguously ironic fandom I could feel good about.

Then, my friend Ben mentioned the Ottawa Senators.

Thanks, Ben.

It happened like this:

Last week, I was on the phone with Ben, whose car has been living in our driveway for the last six months because he moved back to California to wait out the pandemic on his parents’ estate (I’m calling it an estate, Ben—I’m sorry) rather than keep paying rent in Austin to sit inside all the time and try to not catch a potentially lethal virus. It’s fun having his car here. It fits the aesthetic. I mean that sincerely. Miss Ben, but happy to have his car. Anyway, that wasn’t the point of the call, and neither were the Senators, but we got talking about the upcoming NHL season, and I mentioned that Joe’s working on a model (I’ll let Joe spill the beans on what went wrong there—his post should be up right after this one), and that I’d like to pick a favorite hockey team.

I grew up in Illinois, and when the Blackhawks got good, I was happy for them, and happy for my friends who liked them, but having never really followed them myself, it felt opportunistic to befan them. When I lived in Minneapolis, I thought about being a Wild fan, but I never pulled it off. I could never get myself to care. Down here, I thought about hopping on with the Stars, but the Stars are carpetbaggers and I’m not about carpetbagging. I “liked” the Penguins when I was little, meaning I told myself they were my favorite team because I thought I needed a favorite team and penguins are among the coolest animals, but I never actually followed what they did or didn’t do. I love Gritty, but I would feel fraudulent becoming a full-on Philly sports fan. You have to be born into that kind of thing if you’re really going to feel it the way it should be felt. Or so is my impression.

Considering it further, I realized I couldn’t really befan any American team. It’d mean jumping in with the locale, and I’ve got enough odd city allegiances without confusing myself via the matter of whether I had to like the city as well as the team, whether I could just like the team but not the city, and whether I could convince the Carolina Hurricanes (Hurricane?) to move to Greensboro. Factor in that the Leafs and Canadiens seem too iconic to me to be my favorites, and that Vancouver is too nice-sounding of a place to jump alongside (this was what kicked Brighton out when I was considering EPL teams), and I was left, off the top of my head, with three options. The Calgary Flames. The Edmonton Oilers. The Winnipeg Jets. Canadian heartland teams. Blue-collar (I think?) cities. Not too relevant as far as I knew.

But then Ben mentioned the Senators.

Evidently Ben worked for a day one time at his company’s Vancouver office. One of those weekend-trips where you try to dodge taking PTO, is my impression. As he mentioned the fanhoods of the guys there, he eventually got to the Senators.

I was blown away.

I had forgotten the Senators existed. I had forgotten the city of Ottawa existed. I knew little about either.

I assumed (rightly, as I’ve since found out) that this meant the Senators were bad. I assumed (wrongly, as it turned out, but the truth is better) that the Senators were an historic franchise, being from Ottawa and all (turned out they were an expansion franchise in the 90’s and have never won a Stanley Cup). I had a vague notion that Ottawa was in Ontario, but I didn’t know that for sure, and I had a vague impression it was rather small, though I couldn’t peg how small it is. (It turns out it’s roughly Austin-sized, which makes sense given it’s the capital of a population of comparable size to Texas. I still don’t know for sure that it’s in Ontario.)

There’s little that draws me in to the Senators. Their logo isn’t that cool. They don’t have a mascot that goes around scoffing at the lower chambers of bicameral legislatures, which is what a Senator should do. I have thought about Ottawa a maximum of six times in my life, and two of them have been in the last week.

They’re perfect.

We believe in learning our lessons around here, and what we learned from befanning Burnley was that picking the most irrelevant team you can find in a sport you think you might want to get interested in is the best way to go, because there’s no bandwagon risk and no one thinks you have a legitimate connection, making it very easy to explain what you’re up to. In looking at the NHL, I can think of no team more irrelevant than the one I forgot existed. The Ottawa Senators are the Burnley of the NHL, and I can think of no greater compliment.

Happy to be here, fellow Voters. (That’s what we call ourselves, right?)