Being a Fan

We’re all aware that being a "fan" is short for being a fanatic, defined by Merriam Webster as: "marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion". That "uncritical" part is important here. A lot of what we endeavour to do in sports blogging is to present accurate and objective analysis of our team and the small things they’re doing well.

"We" generally refers to the bloggers and fans of well followed but ultimately crummy teams. The Oilers have an amazing stats based blogosphere thing going on and as a Leafs blogger I try my best to live up to their excellent example daily.

But at our core we’re all fans and sometimes you need to forget about being objective. I know that James Reimer isn’t the second best goaltender in the league but right now I don’t care. I know that Phil Kessel won’t keep scoring a goal every game and that eventually the Leafs will lose a one goal game when they enter the third period down by one against a top team but I don’t care.

We recorded a podcast last night with Navin "eyebleaf" Vaswani from Sports and the City. Navin’s always been a more optimistic Leafs fan than me and though I know he understands stats as well as anyone he’s the king of just loving his hockey team.

The Leafs very well may see their luck run out in the coming weeks but for just this once I’m throwing logic out the window and I’m putting my faith in this team. They’ve earned it. Win or lose it’s been great to watch the team and think "they’re going to pull this off" instead of "these idiots will blow it as usual". Even if the Leafs miss the playoffs that’s made this season worth it.