Al Pacino Has Some Advice for the Vancouver Canucks

After another game, the bad dream continues for the Vancouver Canucks and their (honestly, it’s true) loyal legion of fans scattered along Canada’s best coast. Only this time, nobody’s going to wake them up, pinch them, or douse them with water. The Canucks are down by a larger margin now than they were on Friday night, suddenly fixed into a nearly inescapable hole that only three teams in NHL history have overcome… three games to none.

People have often called Canucks fans out for being either extremely overconfident and (somehow simultaneously) self-deprecating and unfaithful. But, you can’t begin to understand the psyche of a fan base and a franchise that has seen such highs and lows over a 42-year period. It tests your patience and your will and, down 3-0 in a seven-game series, it’s hard to imagine that Vancouver has any chance of playing hockey in May.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like to have so much faith in yourself while having so many parasites. Of course, only Pacino could put it into words. So, Al, take it away:

“You’re a lemon. Like a bad car. There is something… there is something inherently defective in you, and you, and you, and me, and all of us. We’re all lemons. We look like everyone else, but what makes us different is our defect.

See, most gamblers, when they go to gamble, they go to win. When we go to gamble, we go to lose. Subconsciously. Me, I never feel better than when they’re raking the chips away; not bringing them in.

And everyone here knows what I’m talking about.

Hell, even when we win it’s just a matter of time before we give it all back. But when we lose, that’s another story. When we lose, and I’m talking about the kind of loss that makes your as*hole pucker to the size of a decimal point – you know what I mean – You’ve just recreated the worst possible nightmare this side of malignant cancer, for the twentieth goddamn time; and you’re standing there and you suddenly realize, Hey, I’m still… here. I’m still breathing. I’m still alive.

Us lemons, we fu*k sh*t up all the time on purpose. Because we constantly need to remind ourselves we’re alive. Gambling’s not your problem. It’s this fu*ked up need to feel something. To convince yourself you exist.

That’s the problem.”

               -Walter Abrams, Two for the Money