This isn't exactly news to me, but it has certainly come to my attention lately that I am not a very good Chicago fan. Maybe some of that is to be expected, as I don't actually live in Chicago. It's always been my personal policy to support Indiana teams first, and then branch out to Chicago when Indianapolis can't provide it. I don't know that Indianapolis, in my lifetime, has ever been a serious contender for an NHL team,* and that certainly won't change any time soon now that the NHL has expanded to 32 teams. There is more of a chance with MLB, but I would imagine there are other, more westward markets baseball would explore before giving Victory Field an upgrade to the bigs. *That was not always the case. It's something I've thought about, though. If Indianapolis did get the other Big 4 sports, would I change my allegiance? I think it would be relatively easy for me in hockey. Like a huge chunk of Chicago and the surrounding area, I discovered/rediscovered the Blackhawks during the flurry of Cups at the start of the decade. I've kept up on the Blackhawks and I watch all the games. But if Indianapolis had an NHL team? I don't think it would be all that hard for me to switch it up. In baseball, the Cubs would be a more difficult habit for me to drop, but even then, I think I could do it. My Indiana roots just run too deep not to. I'd hope it was a National League team, but I think I would make due with an American League team if I had to. I think part of the reason my Chicago-fanness is not quite so deeply ingrained in me is my family ties to Missouri. I think most of my dad's side considers Dexter, MO, to still be Home Base, so to speak. If you aren't familiar with Dexter (which I wouldn't expect most of America to be), it is way down, almost in the bootheel of Missouri. Which means it is a whole lot closer to St. Louis than it is to Chicago. That means my dad, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, is a Cardinals fan, and my brother followed in his footsteps. When hockey came to our generation's attention, my brother gravitated towards Pittsburgh as his team, which remains the case to this day. I assume it was just the players they had at the time and all those Cups in the '90's. He's stuck with them, though, through thick and thin. For his second team, though, it has steadfastly been the St. Louis Blues, I am pretty sure because of the family connection there. I'll be honest. When I became a free agent hockey fan, I tried to become a Blues fan. I really did. I wanted to like a St. Louis team because of the family connection there. But the Blackhawks won out. Their playoff games felt bigger, the crowd more raucous, and the roster was just unbelievably likable. Some of that core is still there, like Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith. It just couldn't fight it, and I just accepted that I was going to be a Blackhawks fan, which also made it easy with my Cubs fandom. Because of my history, though, I'm not so tough on St. Louis teams as a lot of Chicago fans. Generally speaking, the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry is pretty easy going. I've been in both Wrigley and Busch for those games, and the crowd was jovial enough. It's definitely still a rivalry, and those are games you absolutely want to win. But it isn't nearly as nasty as most rivalries. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the historic achievements of the Cubs against the Cardinals. When each team won their first World Series of my lifetime, the Cardinals broke a 24-year drought. The Cubs broke a 108-year drought. That, I think, speaks for itself. The Blues and Blackhawks rivalry is more nasty. Check out the team's respective Reddit groups and even just listen to the crowds in these games. It might not be as well known as Cubs-Cards, but just Chicago vs. St. Louis in generates quite a bit of heat. And I just can't get behind it. The Blue Jackets bandwagon took me as far as it could go this year, and that was a fun ride. St. Louis, thanks to local kid Patrick Maroon, is four wins away from its first serious berth in the Finals.* There's a lot of bitterness with Blackhawks fans, but not me. I'm all for it. I would love to see the Blues go get a Cup. *The Blues were in the finals the first three years of their existence, but that was just a fluke of scheduling. The East was all the Original Six teams, and the West was all the expansion teams. The Blues were treated like you would expect a new expansion franchise to be treated in the Finals each year. (Las Vegas excepted, because they did not really get treated like an expansion team to begin with.) I also can't stress to you just how mind-blowing that would be. When Andrew and I were in St. Louis in January, that Blues team might have been the worst NHL team I had ever watched. The Penguins treated them like a high school team. It was a bit cringey to see, and the Blues were, I think, in last place in the entire NHL. Now, not only are they in the Conference Finals, there is a pretty good chance they'll have home ice.* Worst-to-first is a really good storyline going from one season to the next, but to do it all in half a season? That's got to be a historic achievement, especially in the age of 30-some teams. *Not that the Blues have been very good at home in these playoffs, but still. Vegas has San Jose as the favorite, but it is not at all overwhelming. As of this writing, it looks like San Jose is just -140. So, yes. I definitely still claim the Blackhawks has my team, but consider me pro-Blues all way. If that makes me a fan, so be it. I was always happy to see the Cardinals win the World Series, too, and the Cubs still seem happy enough to have me around. Comments are closed.
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