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Originally Posted by ctorg
That's an interesting flipside sort of question: How do you react when you live in a place without an "official" team, but you've been following a specific team, and a new team moves in? Florida has had to deal with this in baseball. I know in Tampa, there are supposedly as many Yankee fans (or maybe more) as Devil Ray fans.
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From my personal experience, I can remember as a kid being perturbed at local fans whenever the Montreal Canadians came to town to play the Jets. There always seemed to be more of them in the stands for those games cheering them on.
But of course, the Canadians are/were considered hockey royalty and there is a large French Canadian population here. Plus the Jets were only an upstart club compared to them.
The very first game that the Canadians played here after the Jets joined the NHL was dubbed 'Tuxedo Night'. People showed up wearing tuxedos just to watch a hockey game. That's how hallowed Les Canadiens were viewed, at least back then.