Imagine this fictional scenario: You're at your friends Academy Awards night party. The show is over and the party is winding down. Atom Egoyan won an Oscar, so you and some friends decide to go cruising through the streets honking and yelling. You park the car and try to tip over a parked car, yelling "Atom! Atom! Atom!". Failing that, you go into bar to drink. Later, while you're in the washroom, you get so worked up over the victory of the local boy that you just have to kick the walls of a toilet cubicle into oblivion. A bar employee escorts you out of the bar as you yell "Canadian film rules!". Outside you drunkenly wander around yelling about our Armenian filmic golden boy until a police officer stops you. You argue until you punch the officer in the face.

Does this little adventure sound unlikely? After making the subtle adjustment of changing the movie award idea to playoff hockey, and Atom Egoyan to any popular Oilers player, many people I've talked to during playoffs feel that this little scenario is not far from the truth. Indeed, what seem to be the two events which cause the most people believe that our laws are no longer in effect? The first day of high school, and NHL playoffs.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing hockey, although it is a pretty ridiculous sport. If people want to watch a handful of abominably overpaid men beat each other up under the pretence of testing their skating and puck-handling skills, that's fine. I myself like to watch the odd Quentin Tarantino film, which is in many ways the same thing. But after I watched Reservoir Dogs, I didn't cut anyone's ear off to the sound of "Stuck in the Middle with You". No, even though hockey unsettlingly resembles ancient Roman gladiator events (the participants even have two kinds of weapons each), I really can't complain about it. But the behaviour of certain hockey spectators is deserving of condemnation.

The stories I heard about imbecile hockey fans during playoffs were many, and deplorable. While in the washroom at a Whyte Avenue bar, I commented to another guy about the toilet surrounded by an empty frame of a cubicle. The guy turned out to be an employee of the bar, and told me that they had been getting a really bad crowd lately. "Oilers fans", he said, shaking his head. I was also told stories of fans trying to topple buses and assaulting cops. I was at a live music event at which the performer was constantly interrupted mid-song by "Go Oilers go! Go Oilers go!". Nobody was impressed. Of course, more sedate fans who just like to follow the series and hope for the home team will not appreciate, or maybe even believe, these stories. But it is likely that the bar staff, cops, cab drivers, coliseum employees, vehicle owners, and people who like to get some sleep before work the next day have a less accepting attitude towards the methods Oilers fans use to express their passion for hockey.

Playoffs do not make it okay to be a jerk. Sure, it's cool to root for the home team. I mean, that's only natural. But if I was yelling in some Oilers fan's face with ping pong paddles painted on my face because an Edmontonian just won the world table tennis competition, I'd probably get the beats. Still, it seems okay for Oilers fans to act that way. They seem to believe that Canadian DNA is coded with hockey fever. Well, consider me mutated, because I just don't like hockey. It may have been invented in Canada, but so was basketball. So was lacrosse. David Cronenberg is Canadian, but I bet most hockey fans would like to see him deported.

The bottom line is that as long as the spoiled, violent, unsportsman-like behaviour of hockey stays on the rink, hockey is fine. But when Joe and Bo Average have to check the calendar to be sure it isn't an Oilers playoff night before going out for a pint and a chat, something is not right.