Bruins Lose Game 5: Twitter Reaction Mixed

Their Game 5 loss was tough for the Bruins, but most fans aren’t counting them out yet.

After the Boston Bruins blew it against the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals,  losing star player Patrice Bergeron to a probably spleen injury in the process, you might have expected the fan reaction on Twitter to be overwhelming negative—something ranging between despair and desperation.

The overall reaction was definitely mixed but, surprisingly enough, there was a lot more optimism and hope out there than folks ready to pack it in. Of course we’re talking about Boston here, so there was also a healthy dose of rage and drinking involved as well. A pretty interesting range of emotions reacting to the same event.

The fan reaction on Twitter could essentially be broken down into three major categories: sadness, unbridled optimism, and rage or drinking…or rage drinking—the epic subcategories would’ve been endless. Here’s a sampling of some of the best of each category, giving you a sense of what fans will be projecting when the series returns home for a win-or-go-home Game 6 in Boston.

Sadness:

Woe is them.

Woe is them too.

Obviously those are pretty natural responses to a loss like this. Chicago’s got all the momentum going into Game 6 and the odds of a Boston comeback aren’t great. There were a lot of single 🙁 , double :((, and triple :((( sad faces to go around the Twitterverse tonight.

Then again, for every sad face tweeted, my guess is that there had to have been at least two cockeyed optimists out there that were anything but ready to give their beloved B’s up for dead.

Honestly, I’ve never seen so much positivity in the face of a championship loss than I have tonight. It felt like the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. Everything is still kinda terrible, but people are happy nonetheless. 

Bruins fans are the exact opposite of the Miami Heat fans who left Game 6 early, missing their epic OT comeback against the San Antonio Spurs earlier this week.

Stunning Optimism:

We can do it!

Seriously, we can!

Maybe it’s just leftover from all that Boston Strong stuff, but Beantown is currently a city filled with optimism. Which isn’t exactly what you’d expect from a Northeast “liberal” town that has more prestigious universities than you can shake a stick at. Yet, here we are.

And seriously, the nurse assuring everyone you can live without your spleen? It doesn’t get much more optimistic than that.

Image via @katexolawson

What can I say—people be believin’.

Granted, not all people—certainly not this kid:

Image via @nick_edwards97

One Boston fan tweeted this photo out along with the sentiment: this  is “how I feel right about now.” Well that makes sense. Mr. Edwards isn’t the only one with unresolved anger and/or drinking issues that is dealing with the Bruins’ loss tonight.

Outside of sadness and optimism, there was really a mixed bag of tweeted emotions out there.

Mixed Bag:

It’s rigged, I tellz ya!

We’re effed.

The game was certainly a bummer, but the guy who wanted to “Aaron Hernandez someone right now,” referring to murdering your friend after hanging out with him at a bar and then trying in vain to dispose of the evidence, was overreacting just a tad.

Actually, most of the “mixed bag” were the overreacting sect—whether it be calling conspiracy and blaming it on the refs, insisting losing one player equals no chance, determining the series is already over, or that B’s have no chance. They were definitely the most interesting of the bunch.

Honestly, the Bruins will probably lose…but their over-the-top enthusiasm and optimism has convinced me that this series will go to a Game 7.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see though.