This is a big part of why I'm not currently planning on following the team to SLC.
The Yotes have always been shit on. The adversity has made us and the team bond together and made our bond stronger. Whether it was Katie Strang, Seravelli, Gambo, or any of the many, many Canadian hockey pundits, there was always someone telling us we sucked and should be moved already, that our franchise was worthless and dragging down the NHL. That hockey would never succeed here.
There's even a huge portion of fans on these very boards who still say those things today.
This team is 100% going to succeed in some capacity when players like Guenther, Doan, and Cooley take the next step. We can already see it happening in the last games of the season.
The fact of that success being taken away from us, and given to someone else, so that all the fans and all the pundits can say "haha told you so" absolutely f***ing kills me. We don't deserve that kind of shit and we never did. And it took us 5 years to even get to this point, and 20 something of never being able to get over that hump.
The year we had Grabner and Richardson working like money on the PK was special, not only because of that, and because that was the year AM took over with BA coming in, but because we were a team in the playoff hunt, we were playing good exciting hockey and we ended up making the playoffs. The energy on here and everywhere was incredible.
I wish I got to experience something like that with all of you in the future with this team, but instead it's going to be some other fans experiencing it in another city after we went through hell to get here.
I'll still be happy that Cooley and Guenther and Doan and Macelli and everyone get to that point. I'll still be a fan of those players. But I don't think you'll find me supporting the NHL in any further capacity.