Before you get morally outraged that the ever-clueless NHL gave Toronto's Nazem Kadri nothing but a three-game suspension for an inexcusably assholish 2018 playoffs first round cheapshot, take a second to breathe. That's something that, as a Vancouver Canucks fan, you should be good at. 

The absolute worst thing about rooting for the 'Nucks is that, for the sake of one’s sanity, you’re forced to make peace with the past.

It’s the only way to accept nearly 50 years of futility from a team that’s no closer to winning the Stanley Cup that it was in 1970.

It’s how you accept that 18 of the 31 teams currently playing in the NHL have had Stanley Cup parades. And that the teams that remain shut out include relatively new franchises such as the Phoenix Coyotes, Florida Panthers, Minnesota Wild, Columbus Blue Jackets, Nashville Predators, and Atlanta Thrasher’s edition Winnipeg Jets.

As for the other also-rans, you can find some solace in the fact that the Washington Capitals, Buffalo Sabres, and St. Louis Blues have historically been every bit as cursed as Vancouver.

To be a Vancouver Canucks fan is to remember the team’s first appearance in the final in 1982 as a win simply because we made it to the dance. Who cares if the New York Islanders completely shitkicked us in four games straight? If not for that run we wouldn’t have towel power. (Which, by the way, should have been trademarked before every other goddamn team in the league ripped off our shtick. That’s right everyone unfortunate enough to live in Manitoba--you can shove your "Winnepeg Whiteout".)

God bless you, Roger Neilson. 

Being a Canucks fan means accepting losing to the New York Rangers in a Game 7 heartbreaker, only because it led to sainthood status for Trevor Linden. God bless the great Jim Robson for giving us a golden memory we can cherish today at the end of Game 6, when professional Lays Potato Chip Pimp crosschecked Linden behind the play. We might have lost the series (the worst part being watching modern-day Cro-Magnon Messier pick up the cup with a giant shit-eating grin), but we still have one of the greatest calls in the history of the game to cherish: “He will play. You know he'll play. He'll play on crutches. He will play.”

And being a Canucks fan means accepting that one of the things that the NHL loves best is fucking us over.

Sometimes that means assigning Clueless Kelly Sutherland to elimination games, and then watching in horror at one of the worst calls in the history of the sport. You can almost hear the win-the-cup window slamming shut when you watch the puck go in the net in San Jose in 2013, with Daniel Sedin watching from the penalty box.

And sometimes that means watching the NHL job us the way it did in 2011, when the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final to the Boston Bruins in Game 7.

You might remember that cup run as the one where Colin Campbell was the czar of discipline. And that he stepped back and turned the reins over to Mike Murphy because his son Gregory Campbell played for the Boston Bruins. That’s the series where Boston’s Johnny Boychuk drove Vancouver’s vulnerable Mason Raymond into the boards, breaking his back. Boychuk received no suspension.

Canuck Aaron Rome meanwhile stepped into Boston’s Nathan Horton late at the blueline and was suspended for four games in a Stanley Cup final—the stiffest suspension, it should be noted, ever handed out in a cup-final series, and roughly equal to something like 20 games in the regular season. Depleted on the blueline thanks to the loss of top tier defencemen like Dan Hamhuis, the Canucks never recovered.

And we’re now okay with that.

(Actually we’re not. The whole fucking thing stank to high heaven, almost as badly as rooting for a team that makes it to a final roughly once every 20 years only to dream up a new and interesting way of ripping out the heart of its long-suffering fanbase. But whatever.)

Breathe deep. Breathe deep. Because the only good thing about the Canucks snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in 2011 (only five teams in history have lost the cup after going up 2-games-to-0) is that it’s taught us to make peace with the past.

As a result, we’re fine with the NHL deciding today to give notorious Toronto Maple Leafs rat Nazem Kadri only a paltry three-game suspension for attempting to end the season (and possibly the career) of the Boston Bruins’ Tommy Wingels last night. Not once but twice yesterday in Game 1 of the Bruins-Leafs first-round matchup.

Yes, it’s complete bullshit, best explained by the fact that the NHL would love for the Leafs to win the cup on the grounds that it’s good for hockey. (Ratings for the CBC in the mega-market of Ontario aside, that thinking remains a mystery for no other reason than the rest of the country fucking hates the Toronto Maple Leafs.)

But Kadri’s light tap on the wrist for driving Wingels's head into the boards on two separate occasions is something that we can accept. Who cares if Rome got four games in a cup final for a far less egregious event? Sometimes you have to accept that things are beyond your control when you’re a Canucks fan.

So congrats, Nazem, that you only received three games despite being one of the NHL’s worst cheap-shot artists since Matt Cooke. (And here’s hoping that you get to play another round, preferably against the Washington Capitals, where, up five goals in an elimination game, Alexander Ovechkin will line you up in his crosshairs to prove once again that revenge is a dish best served cold. Especially when rats are involved.)

To further prove that Canucks fans can make peace with anything, believe it or not, we’re actually learning to love Brad Marchand this spring on the West Coast, despite his being Public Enemy No. 1 for years after the tragedy of 2011.

Hands up if you loved watching him not only dominate the Maple Leafs on the scoresheet years during Boston’s victory, but add a box of Sifto salt to the wound by sloppily kissing the face of Toronto’s Leo Komarov.

At one point it would have pained us to cheer Marchand for anything other than getting a Singapore-sailor-strength strain of the clap.

But when you’re a Vancouver Canucks fan, you learn to accept things.

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