Who are we as a fan base? Grateful and intelligent, or impatient and disloyal?

40 comments
  1. There was a reason he didn’t play his first game back until they went on the road. Fans are pretty spoiled honestly I think that’s the issue. A lot going to the games now weren’t there for the losing before Crosby or Mario.

  2. Sportswriter gives a couple paragraphs complaining about Pens fans trashing Jarry for his play. Then adds: “I’m not going to tell fans how to behave.” The over-analysis is so tired at this point, the guy lost it, it happens, they overlooked how he caved under any pressure (see all playoff games Jarry has played in), time to move on.. And yes, sportswriter who gets in free to every game, we paid for overpriced tickets so we’re gonna call BS when they trot out a goalie who skates to the face off circle when an opposing player has the puck behind the net. You SHOULD be saying… if Pens fans, who are typically loyal to their team complain like this, then you know it must be bad. I get it your trying to keep interest in the team… but, when they’ve blown a 2 goal lead 8 out of 21 games, people are gonna boo man. Why can’t they write a story about that? That’s got to be some kind of record or something.

  3. Who wrote that garbage? Yes we’ve booed bad players in the past. It’s sad we have to but until Sully and Dubas admit their mistake with Jarry what do you expect?

  4. The thought that “because we are Pittsburgh fans” or that we had a good run over the past years and cannot express displeasure or unhappiness because of how the current <insert Pittsburgh team> is playing is stupid.

  5. This is stupid. Jarry makes $5 mil a year. He’s a professional athlete. He can handle a little booing.

    And say what you want about Pittsburgh fans but when it comes to the athletes we boo, the second they start playing well, we’ll go out of our way to cheer even harder for them. Look at the Rowdy Tellez situation this past summer. Guy got booed harder than Jarry did but the second he started hitting homers, the crowd literally chanted his name in a supportive way.

  6. Firstly, sportswriters in this town stoke fan resentment then write articles about “bad fans”, essentially phoning in the article.

    That said, knowing Jars is struggling and presumably wanting the team to do well, it wouldn’t have killed the fans to throw out a “Jarry” chant on any of the massive saves he made last night.

    I mean the man got peppered compared to what we put on Vas. Last nights loss wasn’t on the goalie.

  7. Idk why sports journalists act like we should be grateful for jarry. What has he won? At some point you have to realize he just fucking sucks and is making the team worse, which angers fans. Pittsburgh has a loyalty problem where they stick with sports team players or management for far too long because they won a championship once. Mike Sullivan is a great example. Pretty soon if you blink it will have been 10 years since he’s won a playoff series let alone a championship. How long after that will they keep firing his coaches and doing overhauls of the team before fans are allowed to get mad at that?

  8. Yohe spending the last year criticizing Jarry in literally almost every article the guy writes (not without reason by the way, he’s obviously been terrible) and wondering why something Jarry does “rubs fans the wrong way” is crazy to me. The guy wrote an entire article this season about Jarry being “unprofessional.” Is he wrong, probably not, but it’s funny to me that he’s passing the blame onto the fanbase for negativity when his coverage is full of it

  9. LOL we’ve boo’d lots of players… Jack Johnson, Sergei Gonchar, Kris Letang, Marc-Andre Fleury, Matt Murray, Jaromir Jagr, our whole Power Play last year

  10. I think it’s pretty fair to say booing your own goalie is pretty lame, Jarry is lamer, and Yohe is the lamest.

    I’m not really that mad about this instance, but I am 110% still mad about doing it to Murray a few years ago

  11. I blame this 100% on management.

    You cannot keep a fan base in limbo this long. Obviously anyone with a brain knows the rebuild has started, but to not say it or strongly suggest it is flat out disrespectful to the fans and the players and creates false expectations.

    I’m not going to start hating dubas, but this type of stuff strikes me as immature from management.

    The only thing the fans feel certain about is that we have to watch one of the greats end his career on a bad team all the while management is pretending it’s not the situation. It naturally creates frustration and resentment and manifests in a guy like harry taking the heat because it’s an easy position to pick on.

  12. …why would Rob Scuderi get booed?

    My memory of him is that he was an exceptionally reliable and selfless defensive defenseman.

    That said, I wasn’t watching hockey during his second stint with the Penguins.

  13. This is just wrong. If you’ve been watching this team, there have always been scape goats. Plenty of good players have faced fan jeers including, Barasso, Gonchar (his first year), and even Paul Coffey. People hated Robbie Brown. I mean come on, be better than this post bait.

  14. I think the article is dumb but I do think the fan base is being irrational. We’ve seen how many cups with this core? I’d rather savor Crosby while we have him and relish the era without the expectation that we should or can be a juggernaut. Those days are over. The next era awaits. Enjoy Crosby while you can.

  15. I generally don’t understand turning on your own team like this.

    You only watch to see them win and you hate them otherwise? What kind of relationship is that with something you care about?

    These core guys put together an epic stretch and you don’t want to see them finish out their careers here good, bad or ugly? There’s no faith or loyalty at all?

    Let’s be real. Pens fans generally aren’t very good fans. They are fair weather. So much so that the last time the team stopped being elite, the team almost left Pittsburgh.

    Idk. Maybe embrace hockey as a sport. Understand that teams build in cycles and they’ve had a really good run.

    Don’t throw out the good while rebuilding or you’ll become the Cleveland Browns.

  16. Pittsburgh literally turns on its players all the time! I feel like I’m being gaslit. Scuderi, Johnson, Jarry, Murray getting the Bronx Cheers. And it’s not a Penguins Player thing either – Reirden, Canada, Claypool, Bush, Pickett.

    I’m not judging it one way or the other but I think Yohe is misremembering things lol.

  17. Sorry about the length.. I got carried away.

    TLDR: I don’t like people booing their own team, but as they’ve nickel and dimed their own team and provide a crappy product, I can understand how you’d express your displeasure.

    ————————

    I’ve noticed this in modern sports and I have mixed feelings about it. Pens hockey and University of Tennessee athletics (especially football) are my lifeblood.

    I was raised not to boo your own team. No matter how bad the play call, no matter how egregious the error, these are your guys/gals and they play for your team and you back them in the stadium/arena. At your house or among friends, sure. “Soandso is KILLING us. Why can’t the coaches see he’s a liability,” and so on. But don’t boo your own guys.

    That’s pretty much still how I behave and I am comfortable with that.

    BUT: I’ve softened a bit on feeling disappointed in others booing. I’m 40, and growing up, it used to be totally reasonable to buy a ticket to any game you wanted. Big games, playoff games, yeah it might get a little pricey on the scalper market, but you could get a ticket if you were persistent.

    But now, the prices are through the roof. The Tennessee Alabama game earlier this year was a game I desperately wanted to go to and the get-in price was about $500 a ticket. So you’re looking at $2500 for a family of 5 to get in the door. Then parking, concessions, souvenirs… it adds up in a hurry.

    I went and we won, and it was a lifelong memory I’ll treasure. But I’d paid $2500 just for tickets for my family to go to a major sporting event, and for that price, I’m expecting to get a certain level of product, if that makes sense.

    Now, with college athletes being able to profit off their name image and likeness, we know players are getting nice paydays. Our quarterback reportedly has an NIL deal worth about $2 million per year to license his NIL for autographs, merchandise, etc. I am hounded constantly to donate to my school and to donate to our NIL collective so they can make enticing offers to players considering our school.

    So I’m sitting at a game I paid an arm and a leg to get into. I’m donating to the university and the NIL collective every month. I know the QB (a 19 year old kid) is making $2 million dollars this year because of his status as a top recruit.

    When that team, that charged me all that money, comes out and shits the bed, I’m going to feel like “what am I even wasting my money on this for? It just makes me angry or sad.”

    I really like Jarry. I (foolishly) drafted him for my fantasy league earlier. I felt the team had positive momentum at the end of last year (despite missing the playoffs) and he was gonna come back healthy and refreshed and we were gonna see good Jarry again.

    He’s just not getting it done on the ice. I hope he turns it around and I will be the first to cheer him on if he does.

    But I don’t begrudge folks, many of whom paid a pretty penny for their seats or a boat load for their season tickets or whatever, letting out some frustration. Again, not for me. BUT.. you’ve got a fan base you’re going to NEED soon enough when we really hunker down into a rebuild mode someday and suck even worse, and if you’re going to nickel and dime them for every penny, you can’t feel mad when they boo you because you put a crappy product on the ice.

    It’s sports. No one’s going undefeated. You have good nights and bad nights. I know we are going to lose games. But these blown leads, unforced errors.. they’re so frustrating.

    Pens Reddit is my main Pens hangout, and I find the fans here to be among the most supportive of any fan group I follow in any sports.

    If our fans are booing the team, the problem probably isn’t the fans. It’s the team.

    Just my two cents.

  18. While Jarry is clearly struggling he’s not getting any help. Tough to play goalie when you have EK65 in front of you.

  19. Like all things, the fan base is made of individuals. Not all Pens fans are booing Jarry while some are. Some are watching every game and some aren’t. It’s silly to put all fans in the same category since we don’t all act the same.

  20. Fucking cringe ass article.

    Jarry has been paid handsomly while we wait for him to figure his shit out. There’s no point in booing now though, because it wouldn’t matter who is in goal behind this dumpster fire. The real shame is Jarry pissing away that last few years where there was still a decent team in front of him.

  21. ill never cheer for another team no matter what. way i see it, it can only get so bad before it gets better and if that takes 6 years so be it

  22. Suck it up! When I’m paying $200 per ticket I’ll show whatever emotion I want whether it’s cheering like crazy, antagonizing the opposing team (not really necessary this year but ya know) or showing I’m pissed off at an underperforming player. Everything you do in the lower bowl annoys someone who can’t mind their business which is why half the time it sounds like a funeral home. Jarry isn’t it right now and he’s getting paid enough that he can handle a little audible criticism from the ones paying his salary, even if the more delicate fans and “reporters” can’t.

  23. Your problem is the GM as a leafs fan this guy has made terrible trades and signings that handicap the organization for years to come. Trading prospects for a bag of pucks aka Devon Levi Seth Jarvis Mason Marchment Dakota Joshua List goes on he’s trash

  24. I’m not sure struggling is what I would call Jarry. He’s been this way 3 plus years. He’s passed struggling.

  25. Continuing to run Jarry out there and expecting a different outcome is madness. It’s a booable offense, more directed towards mgmt and ownership.

  26. 100% wrong. Pens fans have absolutely booed players who are underperforming. I don’t agree with it but like the article says, you paid for an overpriced ticket so do as you please.

  27. The organization is disrespectful to the fans AND the core players. So we’re allowed to express our opinions with boos. Especially at these ticket prices. Jarry should have been traded 2 years ago.

  28. I would’ve booed to. We don’t buy tickets to be the spiritual uplifters and therapists for the overpaid pylon in the net. I think the biggest losers are the people who complain about people booing (ie, complaining). If the players don’t like it, play better. So long as no one being personally attacked for things off the ice or out of their control, booing is 100% acceptable

  29. I just hate the pretentiousness of it.

    I’ve never seen a game at PPG. But I was at Acrisure last year when we boo’d the shit out of Canada.

    Fans pay money, they are entitled to voice their opinion however the hell they want.

    Jarry might be a good dude, but he’s stinkin’ it up on the ice.

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