510 miles from where it happened, I stared into my phone camera in perfect Jim Halpert deadpan style. "Montréal wins it!" exclaimed announcer Brendan Burke in the background. The Canadiens, the lowest seed in the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs, had just cashed in on a clear-cut two-on-none in overtime to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game five of their first-round series. And I, a die-heart, massive, ridiculously obsessed Philadelphia Flyers fan, was sad.
When I was first getting into hockey in 2016, I stumbled upon the YouTube channel of Steve Dangle. Steve (real last name of Glynn) is best known for his Leafs Fan Reaction (LFR) series, in which he uploads a video recapping games in hilarious (and often outraged) fashion. He has made a video for almost every single Maple Leafs game since the 2007-08 season. That's over 1,300 videos alone on a channel that has garnered over 60,000,000 views since its inception.
But there has been one basic thing missing amidst the avalanche of content Dangle has produced: a video about the Maple Leafs winning a playoff series. While my Flyers and Phillies have been off snapping long droughts of their own in recent years, the Leafs have come agonizingly close to a breakthrough an agonizing amount of times. In 2013, they became the first team in NHL history to blow a three-goal lead in the third period of a game seven to the Bruins. But it's ok, because they earned opportunities for revenge by taking the Bruins to seven games in 2018 and 2019. They lost both, of course. In 2020, they avenged that collapse by rallying from a 3-0 deficit in game four of their best-of-five qualifier series against the Blue Jackets. They fell behind 3-0 in game five, and let's just say they didn't have another comeback in them.
When that Canadians goal went in, spoiling yet another Leafs comeback from 3-0 down, I could see the collapse coming. And that's exactly what happened. The Leafs rallied from 2-0 in game six but lost in overtime again. They played game seven like they knew they were going to lose it, and sure enough, they did. Steve's 31-minute eulogy to the team's season has accumulated nearly 700,000 views. It was the second longest video he had ever uploaded — until a year later, when he crossed the 33-minute threshold in his video for the final game of Toronto's following season: "LFR 15 - Round 1, Game 7 - The Fog - TB 2, TOR 1."
As someone who usually loves watching Steve's videos, those game seven defeats have been harder to stomach each year. It seems like I'm in the minority here, though — none of Dangle's 19 most-viewed videos are for any of the 600-plus games the Leafs have won since he started his channel.
In the first full season of Steve's videos I watched (2016-17), the Maple Leafs made the playoffs, and the Flyers didn't. So it felt natural to root for the Leafs — the deeper they went, the more content I'd get to enjoy. Both made it the next year, but the Flyers went out first, so I shifted gears again. In 2018-19, the Flyers missed again while the Leafs cruised through the regular season. By then, there was no doubt which team I'd be cheering for to go all the way when the Flyers are out of the picture.
At some point over the last six years, Steve has done something I never would have imagined. He has turned me, someone with no other connections to Toronto or the Maple Leafs, into a legitimate fan of the team. Preteen me would cringe at the idea of cheering for a non-local team —how could I be such a traitor? But you know what? I enjoy doing it. There's no rule against doing it. So I do it. There are a lot of complicated things in life — there's no point in overthinking something so simple.
Of course, the Leafs are not a natural rival of the Flyers. They aren't hated in Philadelphia the way teams like the Rangers, Devils, Islanders and Bruins are. But here's the thing. For as much as I like Steve, for as much as I hope the Leafs break through this year — yep, they're back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs — it's not like we're friends. We've never met. I think we've had like two or three very ordinary Twitter interactions. And that's it.
As for all of those above teams, I do have friends who cheer for them. Good friends, in fact. Friends who I really like. And as shocking as this may be to read for people who know me, yes, I realize there are things that are more important than sports. Friends are undeniably one of them. I like my friends, and therefore, I like it when they are happy. The Rangers winning will make some of them happy. The Devils winning will make others happy. Same for the Bruins. And the Islanders. And other teams that didn't make the playoffs this year too. That's just for hockey — there are plenty of instances of this phenomenon in other sports, too.
So, I want my friends to be happy. I hope that things that will make them happy happen. And if that includes the Rangers or Bruins winning, I — still, for all intents and purposes, the biggest Flyers fan on this campus — will cheer for those things to happen.
I understand this may sound like sacrilege. Believe me, it's a little weird to write myself. But as someone who had (at least a small amount of) support from Yankees, Red Sox and Mets fans, among others, at my back during the Phillies' World Series run this fall, it is so much better to be on the side of people you like. I'm not saying you can't chirp them a bit — that's part of the fun of sports. When they're playing your team, you can, and should, still root for them to lose like there's no tomorrow. And if you're a Penguins, Cowboys, Braves or Michigan fan reading this and thinking this level of support extends to you — yeah, that's just not going to happen. Sorry, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.
Don't think of it like you're cheering for your rivals. You're cheering for your friends and people you like, first and foremost. Again, there are lots of things in life that are really complicated. But sometimes it really is that simple.
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