NEW JERSEY VS. TORONTO BUFFALO VS. PITTSBURGH COLORADO VS. LOS ANGELES DALLAS VS. ST. LOUIS

Thursday, April 26 Booing anthems the newest fan pastime Terry Frei Special to ESPN.com This needs to be established right out of the (penalty) box: It made me mad to hear Vancouver fans angrily booing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the Canucks' series with Colorado, and it made me ashamed to hear that fans in Dallas booed "O Canada" during the Stars' series with Edmonton. Neither siege of booing was unprecedented. It's been going on for years in the NHL. But what made me even more angry was the reaction to the booing of the anthems -- a reaction that seems to have evolved over the years. We used to consider that sort of conduct the indefensible, shameful actions of the moronic fringe. We said it was too bad, but how can we indict an entire crowd for the actions of a few idiots? If the Edmonton crowd wanted to boo "The Star-Spangled Banner" as four of the Oilers' five starting skaters had U.S. passports in their lockers, that was their problem. Now we're actually hearing attempts to "explain" and rationalize -- and even defend -- the booing of the U.S. anthem as some sort of political statement, as if were the intellectual equivalent of the Magna Carta. At a hockey game? There is no way to rationalize the classless, bush-league booing of national anthems as anything other than in-the-gutter, perhaps even in-the-cups brainlessness. Anyone who boos an anthem, no matter which one, should be told to shut up. That's true, whether it happens in Vancouver or Dallas. That's true, whether it's portrayed as spontaneity or calculated "they-started-this" retaliation. But after a significant number of Vancouver fans booed the anthem at Games 3 and 4 of the series against Colorado, a lot of folks, including some members of the media, tried to rationalize it and seemed on the border of condoning it. We heard talk about hockey teams being moved, the disparity in NHL payrolls, about the sport even being stolen away from its homeland and about perceived slights in the U.S. media. That's reaching, and giving those booing far too much credit for reasonable thought processes. It also endorses the ludicrous view that no American who knows hockey should have a problem with the Canadians booing the Star-Spangled Banner. What does knowing the story of, say, Ace Bailey's life-threatening injury, and Jean Beliveau's birthplace, or even the problems the Canadian franchises face in this era, have to do with reacting to someone booing the national anthem? That debate over whether Canadians should resent the U.S.-based franchises, or even the perceived slights in the U.S. media, belongs in other places. Over beers, and it could even be Molson's or Labatt's. On the op-ed page. In e-mails. But not while the songs representing nations, and their generations of history, are being played. For a few minutes as a sporting event is about to begin, the anthems -- whether one nation's or two -- provide time for pause. Time to honor. Time to reflect. Time to offer respect. Or at least, that was the original purpose. The yelling through the anthem in Chicago at Blackhawks' games, which turns the anthem into a provincial fight song, is another form of distortion. Maybe we're to the point where the anthems shoudn't be played at all. So Canadians boo the U.S. anthem to "support" their team? OK, there's some truth in that, but that doesn't make it any less stupid, or irrelevant. The notion that one roster of multi-national mercenaries playing another roster of multi-national mercenaries is some sort of holy cause or a referendum on the two markets involved is nothing short of absurd. It's absurd when it's Detroit vs. Colorado, and it's absurd when the two teams are on opposite sides of the U.S.-Canada border. (By the way, there is no doubting that if the Canucks-Avs series had gone to a fifth game in Denver, some members of the Pepsi Center crowd would have indulged in a retalitatory booing of "O Canada" -- and that would have been just as disgusting.) It would be refreshing to hear one NHL player -- Canadian, American, whetever -- have the nerve to tell the fans to cork it during the anthems. In this case, and I don't care if this is melodramatic, booing each others' anthems is an insult to Canadian and American troops who came ashore at adjacent Normandy beaches. Booing an anthem would be indefensible even if the team was from the People's Republic of China and the booing was a misguided, inappropriate-for-the-moment protest of the nation's human rights record. It's also part of a bigger issue -- the endangered concept of civility in and (even more so) around sports. The ineffable quality called "class" is increasingly rare as we discuss and passionately follow sports. We accept it. We often laugh it off. Hey, that's just the way it is. And we rarely even bother to call those who cross the line any longer. Or if we do, we're told, gee, we should go cover or watch figure skating -- or the ballet. Have sports really come to that? We just expect everyone to act like morons? We can't believe that that following sports best involves a combination of passion, intelligence, fervor, literacy and class without being accused of being some tree-hugger in Birkenstocks and with a head in the clouds? We're all part of it, including the media. If Red Smith were alive today, some sports editor by now would have been telling him, "Come on, Red, you gotta have an edge!" Provocative journalism now means relentlessly attempting to stirring it up as you type, acting as if every issue in sports -- even who should play the points on the second power-play unit -- is worthy of screaming passion. So booing the anthems is increasingly just considered part of the landscape. In Denver, we have a minority of fans continuing with the imbecilic "Red Wings (inhale)" chant at all Avalanche games, not caring that it's both classless and also helps perpetuate the (mistaken) image of Colorado fans as hockey ignoramuses. Say a word about it, and you're likely to be told, "Hey, it's just (bleeping) fun," and who cares what it says to the 12-year-old in the next row? We have talk show hosts screaming in the middle of the night about the "disgrace" of the Patriot League champion getting an automatic berth in the NCAA basketball tournament. We have hosts getting ahead by routinely using vocabulary more appropriate for the longshoremen's union hall than the airwaves. That isn't as offensive as much as it is insulting, because it indicates a belief that the listeners are idiots. And now we have both print and electronic commentators who should know better, trying to make the derision and lack of respect for anthems -- and what they represent -- into eloquent and excusable political statements. The funny thing is, hockey always has been the classiest of sports, in a quirky and sometimes intriguingly contradictory way. The handshake line at the end of each playoff series is the most visible expression of the phenomenon. No matter how ugly the series got, no matter how frayed the emotions, the hands almost always are offered and shaken. So in this case, the booing of the anthems in the first round of the playoffs -- certainly neither unprecedented nor particularly surprising -- is a symptom of a larger malaise. There's no rationalizing it. Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His feedback e-mail address is ChipHilton23@hotmail.com. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories