"How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways..

.. Alright If I Use Your Teeth To Help?"

A "Love" Letter to The Vancouver Canucks from the Chicago Blackhawks.

(Need I add that this is all entirely in jest?)

Hi Canucks. Remember us? Yes, us. We used to be the ones you loved to hate. Remember how we would stare into each other's eyes, each just waiting for the other to blink so we could knee them in the groin? How we used to take long walks by the riverside and shove each other in where all the sharpest rocks were? Evenings spent before a roaring fire while the other one desperately rolled around on the ground? Ah. Those were simple times, so young, so free, so full of mindless searing rage.

But that changed, Canucks. oh yes. They came along. Them. They turned your hideous little heads with their swaggering Eastern Sophistication* and fancy ways. We simple, downhome folk just couldn't compete.

Sure, we tried. Heaven knows, we tried once more to crush your hopes and expectations so we could dance on them singing an annoying song by a now-defunct Scottish band, just like the old days. But we came up short.

Six inches short, to be precise. And you told us "it's OK, size doesn't matter, what's a few inches between blood-enemies?" and we wanted to believe you. We believed that we were still at the bottom of your heart.

But you lied to us, Canucks. There you were, for all the world to see, shamelessly trading insults and blows with Them. We hoped and prayed that it would just be an (early) Summer Fling, that you would realise that your loathing and contempt for Them would soon pass, that we were your true Hate. But it didn't stop there. Oh, no. It's gone on and on. And while you were letting them accrue PIMs and hurling abuse back and forth in the media, what were we doing? We were in our bedrooms, The Black Parade on repeat. We even wrote you a poem! A poem! And signed it in our blood (well, purple marker actually BUT IT DIDN'T HAVE ANY GLITTER IN IT!!) That's how much we care, Canucks.

But you ignored us. We tried so hard, even let Bolland out of his cage to try and stir some of that old foul feeling in your stinking breast, but no.

And now here we are.. With a chance to prove to you the depth of our loathing. They are nowhere to be seen and the band is playing our song

So what do you say, Canucks? Take our hand (no, not that one, this one) spit in our eye and let's murmur sour-nothings into each other's ears (we can reattach them later). Let's fan those flames, for old times sake.

You wouldn't want us to get all, well, Emo on you or anything..

Whaddaya say?

* Actual Eastern Sophistication may be smaller than suggested