After P.K. Subban scored a double overtime winner against the Boston Bruins on Thursday night, a noticeable minority of fans from their longtime rivals took to Twitter to racially abuse the talented Montreal Canadiens defenseman.
After Subban gave his team a one-game advantage in the second-round series, one fan tweeted:
“F***ing N***** u shouldn’t even be playing hockey”.
While another classy gentleman had this to say:
“Can’t believe we let #PKSubban score on us twice. The only thing black that should be on the ice is the puck.”
You get the picture?
The negative tweets caused enough of a stir that the Bruins organization had to release a statement denouncing the cowardly behavior of the ignorant brood.
Subban hasn’t addressed the controversy but according to CP 24, his head coach Michel Therrien has, and he says his star defensemen isn’t bothered by the abuse.
“He’s got a lot of character, that kid,” Therrien said Saturday prior to Game 2 against the Bruins.
Therrien met with Subban, who is black, on Friday night to see how he was feeling and to ensure his player knew he had the team’s support.
“But like he said, and from my standpoint too, it’s more important that we’re here to sell the game, we’re here to win a hockey game, we’re here to compete,” Therrien told reporters. “We’re not here to talk about a few bad people that put some comments on the Internet.”
Boston has a history of racism that obviously still lingers in its community till this day, so this type of behavior shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Subban is arguably the most polarizing player in a sport that has some issues with racism that it’s going to have to address sooner or later. This type of ignorance has to be suffocated until it takes its last breath.
In the meantime P.K. should just focus on banging in goals and winning Norris trophies.