There is a long tradition of obituaries of fans of disappointing sports teams trolling those teams, or particular players on them. The latest example of that comes from an obituary for Russell George Atkins of Campbell River, B.C., Canada.
Atkins passed away at 79 on Jan. 13, and an obituary for him on the local paper (The Campbell River Mirror) website had a good line about his fandom of the embattled Vancouver Canucks. So good that the paper wrote it up as a news story Thursday after it got passed around a bit on Twitter.
The last line in question:
Russell would’ve liked to have had 6 of the Vancouver Canucks to be his pallbearers so they could have let him down one more time.
As the paper noted in its news story (which carries the excellent headline of “Vancouver Canucks fan has last word on NHL team’s legacy of losing”), this led to more than 5,000 views for Atkins’ obituary Wednesday. That’s much more than you would expect for an obituary more than a week old on a local newspaper’s website.
While the pallbearer/”let him down one more time” bit has been used before in sports obituaries, it remains a classic for a reason. And it’s certainly applicable to the Canucks (or is that “Can-nukes“?) at the moment. That team has made the playoffs once in the last seven seasons, and they’re 19-26-3 this season heading into Friday night’s home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. We’ll see if new (and newly serenaded) head coach Rick Tocchet can make them capable of fewer letdowns going forward.
[The Campbell River Mirror; top photo of disappointed-looking Canucks’ defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson on Jan. 23 from Anne-Marie Sorvin/USA Today Sports]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.