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Senators fans springs will be pretty quiet for the second straight season. With Ottawa not being in the playoffs, fans will inevitably look to other teams to cheer for. It’s nowhere near the same as cheering for the Senators, but it can be fun to have another team that you get a bit invested in. Everyone is going to have different preferences and biases, but I know that there will still be lots of overlap amongst the fanbase. So let’s go through who would make the most sense for Senators fans to bandwagon come April:
Carolina Hurricanes
I feel like this should be everyone’s team. They play an extremely fun brand of hockey that has led to them averaging a league-leading 34.8 shots per game, and they deserve to finally make the playoffs after having a few years of incredible shot metrics but dreadful goaltending. Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen are extremely under the radar and easy to cheer for, plus Justin Williams is well respected and knows how to have fun:
They’ve also done the best thing in the NHL in a long time, which is the Storm Surge after home wins. A small percentage of fans find it “disrespectful,” but what those people don’t get is that these hilarious stunts are bringing people to the games and it’s creating a fun atmosphere for the players and the fans. The NHL can be so stuck in the past in many respects and for some reason they are against fun a lot of the time. If it works, why be mad? All I know is, I cannot wait to see them win a playoff game at home and do something like this:
I’m Team #BunchofJerks and you should be too.
Tampa Bay Lightning
I can see why you wouldn’t want to cheer for the Lightning. They are insanely good and have been for a long time. They are the easy favourites to win it all and they are quite different than the underdog Hurricanes. However, this current core of the Lightning have not won a Cup, so it’s not as if people can say they are “sick of as winning” as you can easily say with the Blackhawks, Kings, or Penguins.
I just find their entire team so likable, and there’s something appealing about them having so many formerly undervalued superstars. Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov were drafted in the second round, Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde were undrafted, and Ondrej Palat was the fourth last draft pick. They are a perfectly well-oiled machine, and I think it would be so cruel if they never win a Cup with the current core that they have. Obviously the best team doesn’t always win, but let’s be honest: they deserve it. Furthermore, if the NHL is a copycat league, then maybe the Senators will try to copy some of their model if they win.
Vegas Golden Knights
Reason to cheer for Vegas: Mark Stone.
Reason not to cheer for Vegas: the team’s Twitter account.
I would love to see Stone win somewhere, mainly because I feel like his body would spontaneously combust while he lifted the Stanley Cup. He is an incredibly talented star player and he deserves to be a champion, so I would be more than happy to see Vegas win just because of him. I don’t love the idea of an expansion team winning it all in their second season just because the city would be so spoiled, but I do think it’s pretty neat how fast Las Vegas transformed into a hockey town.
I love watching Jonathan Marchessault and Max Pacioretty (along with Stone), plus they have a ton of other talented players. It would be an odd mix of emotions cheering for them, but having Stone makes it easier.
San Jose Sharks
A lot of the same rationale for cheering for Vegas also applies to San Jose due to Erik Karlsson being a Shark. I want to see him win and I want him to cement his legacy as one of the best defensemen of all time, which he probably will not be able to do without a ring, sadly. I also have a soft spot for the Sharks because I actually wrote about them in 2013-14 for my first ever blogging position and they became my second team to follow that year.
Much like Tampa Bay, they have been good for so long but have nothing to show for it. This franchise has gone through even more heartbreak though because Tampa Bay at least has a Cup from 2004, and San Jose’s run of excellence has been going for even longer. You could easily make the case that they are the second best team in the league, and just like the Lightning, they deserve some success. Joe Thornton is still somehow underrated by fans, and seeing him finally win a Cup would make me smile. Between Karlsson, Thornton, and Burns, there are a lot of interesting personalities on the team, and they would be a part of an entertaining run to the finals. I just hope that Martin Jones doesn’t sink their hopes and dreams.
Nashville Predators
Following the theme of cheering for ex-Senators players, Kyle Turris is another easy player to be happy for. He has struggled mightily this season with just 22 points in 46 games and has also had injury issues as well. I’d be extremely happy for him if the Predators won though, as he was always in that upper class of fan favourites over the past half decade.
The rest of the Predators include some intriguing players like Viktor Arvidsson, the polarizing PK Subban, Filip Forsberg, Roman Josi, and many others. I know of a few fans that hate the Predators, although I don’t really understand why. The atmosphere at home games is second-to-none, and seeing more of that in the playoffs would be great for the NHL. Similar to the Hurricanes Storm Surge, anything that challenges the boring NHL norms is a good thing in my books. They have no Stanley Cups in their franchise history, which is another reason to root for this team that could easily get bounced in the first round or go all the way.
In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind seeing any of the Western Conference teams win the Cup because Chicago and Los Angeles used to be the teams who everyone loved to hate, but they will be on the outside looking in. I feel personally invested in both St. Louis and Arizona because I predicted them a bit higher than most people coming into the season, and it’d be nice to see either one of them take a step forward. Calgary is a fun team as well that I could get behind, Winnipeg has finally built a perennial contender that has a chance to win, and I am extremely neutral to both Dallas and Minnesota.
So there aren’t that many teams I would
hate to see win besides Toronto, Boston, and Pittsburgh (plus Montreal if they make it in). I actually like Columbus as a team, but obviously with Ottawa having their first round pick this year, them making at least the Conference Finals would be the worst case scenario. But if I had to pick a cheering guide, I’d go:
1. Hurricanes
2. Sharks
3. Lightning
4. Predators
5. Golden Knights
Who will you be cheering for on the side come playoff time?
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