Vandalism at Lucic’s church gives Vancouver another black eye: Cam Cole

BY CAM COLE, VANCOUVER SUN
17/2/2012

The elementary school kids were out there Friday at St. Archangel Michael Serbian Orthodox Church, in their coats and tuques, with pails and detergent and scrub brushes, trying to erase the filth.

“F–k Lucic,” someone had spray-painted in black on the beige wall of the church and cultural centre in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, the church attended by Boston Bruins winger Milan Lucic and his family, the church where the former Vancouver Giant had brought the Stanley Cup last summer, after famously winning it in Game 7 at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.

“Go Canuks Go,” read the rest of the message, the misspelled team name saying pretty much everything you needed to know about the I.Q. of the perpetrator, the crudely-drawn male genitalia likely pinpointing the rest of the artist’s shortcomings.

A photo of the graffiti was put up on Twitter by Lucic’s girlfriend, Brittany Carnegie, disgusted by the slur, another senseless act of hockey-inspired vandalism in a city that is only now, eight months after the fact, getting around to punishing the rioters who dragged Vancouver’s — and the Canucks’ — reputations through the beer and urine and fire and broken glass last June.

In fact, Carnegie’s tweet and the reading of the 17-month (plus two years’ probation) sentence handed down to the first rioter convicted, 20-year-old Ryan Dickinson of Coquitlam, might as well have been simultaneous, for one seemed to cancel the other.

Any idea of closure was purely fanciful, anyway, because these court cases will drag out interminably, the sentences or acquittals seeping out for months on end, each another reminder of what went on here in the hours following Game 7 — each reopening the old wound to be gleefully salted by Vancouver/Canuck haters, whose numbers seem to be legion.

Friday felt like an appropriate time for someone at the Canucks, perhaps the face of the front office, GM Mike Gillis, to come forward and speak of the need for healing, now that the sentencing had started — the need for those misguided few among the Canucks’ fan base to grow up and show a little class, and not continue to make the recovery impossible.

And he pretty much did. Along with a few other things.

“Some stupid people did some stupid stuff. It’s embarrassing as a citizen of Vancouver,” said Gillis.

“Our answer for it is that we’ve begun a complete campaign, unilaterally, about being responsible. Responsible citizens, responsible fans, to behave responsibly, and that you’re not part of our fan base if you choose to be irresponsible — whether you’re celebrating or you’re angry or whatever you are.

“It’s our initiative, because we found that what we suggested last year fell on deaf ears.”

The Canucks, Gillis said, tried to warn the city, the police, the media (including our newspaper) that the lid might just blow off as early as Game 7 of the Chicago series in the first round of playoffs.

As for the perception problem the Canucks have endured since then, Gillis contends the riot had nothing to do with it.

“Our biggest issue last year with team perception occurred when Canadian media from other cities showed up here for the playoffs and wanted to accuse us of all sorts of nefarious things,” he said.

“They created a huge storm of negativity around our team … [that] started by saying we could never be Canada’s Team. It got to the point where I was getting calls about it from radio shows in the U.S.”

The Toronto Maple Leafs — who appear to be Canada’s Team based on the sheer number of surviving seniors who remember when they were good — are in town for a Hockey Night in Canada game Saturday.

As for the vandalism at Lucic’s church, Gillis was more sombre.

“I think that the only thing we can say is that we have absolutely no association with any person that would do such a thing,” the GM said, “and they are not representative of what we are as a business, the way we act in the community, and what we attempt to do daily.”

And yet, even Gillis acknowledges that however good the hockey club’s intentions may be, ultimately what any one fan may choose to do is out of the Canucks’ control, just as the riot was, just as the vandalism of the church was.

The Canucks cannot legislate even a modicum of class from their fan base, any more than the Boston Bruins can, or the New York Yankees or any Philadelphia sports franchise or any soccer team in FIFA’s overwrought world.

There are no character tests associated with purchasing a season’s ticket, much less the act of watching a game on TV in a bar or in the comfort of one’s own living room. Any of those levels of involvement is sufficient to qualify the consumer as a fan, and across that very broad spectrum — as in society itself — there is bound to be a certain percentage of mouth-breathing twits and thugs.

It wasn’t the Canucks’ doing that the dregs among their fandom went on a rampage of stupid destruction of property after Game 7, or that someone — “obviously it’s some punk kids or teenagers thinking that they are cool doing something like that,” Lucic told reporters after Friday’s morning skate in Winnipeg — desecrated a church in the name of the beloved “Canuks.”

“It reflects badly against the people of Vancouver [whom] I’ve defended, especially after what happened after the finals last year,” said Lucic. “But karma is a funny thing, and what goes around comes around.”

It already has, once. Now there is one more log on the fire, for the Bruins and their powerful brute of a winger.

As hard as the people who cleaned up after the riot worked, as tough as the sentences may be, as diligently as the school kids scrub those church walls, it seems the madness is never behind us.

It’s not the Canucks’ fault, any more than the riots were. It’s not Vancouver’s fault, either. Stupidity isn’t confined to any city or any team’s fan base.

But once again the town and, because its name was used, the hockey club have to wear the embarrassment, for all to see.

ccole@vancouversun.com

©Copyright(c)The Vancouver Sun

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