I always wondered why the WINNERS of sports championships rioted. This makes more sense.

Considering how awful Vancouver played tonight, I can see where the anger comes from.

It's shameful. I hope they all get identified and prosecuted.

I was pretty surprised. It doesn't seem very... Canadian.

I have to admit to chuckling when I read that the burned car was a BMW.

It's shameful. I hope they all get identified and prosecuted.

Thankfully the players all wear jerseys with their names and numbers, so it should be an easy job.

It seems weird to riot when you lose. We've had some violence over Stanley Cup and Superbowl wins but not over losses.

Are there underlying tensions in Vancouver right now? Something related to jobs or the government? All those rioting appeared to be young men, who may have already had their fur up about something else. Just seems so strange....

Plus, everyone here in Appalachia knows that you burn couches not cars.

It's a sad day to be a Vancouverite *sigh*

I was here for the 1994 Stanley Cup riot when we also lost in a game 7 . What happens is you have a lot of very tense people crowding into the city core before the game and a disappointed, angry crowd afterward. Then you add in a group of violent drunken thugs who are just out to create as much disorder as possible and then the mob mentality kicks in. Just walking throught downtown before the game, you could sense that if we lost, there was going to be trouble and despite a police force who learned valuable lessons from 1994, they weren't able to contain the temporary madness.

The positive side of this is that through social media, there are already sites devoted to tracking down these assholes by posting pics and videos of them and indentifying them so they can be prosecuted quickly . there is also private citizens groups who are organizing and coming to the downtown core in order to assist in the cleanup and put this ugly incident behind us.

This is normally a beautiful, friendly and safe city . If you ever get a chance to visit, you should. There's so just much to do here year round. You'll love it

Rollick, Vancouver is beautiful. I was there with azuresunday (from mefi) in the October before the Olympics, and we were in awe of how nice the city is. Jealous, even. It's on our places to live if we ever get the chance.

Frankly, I just feel all of this rioting is so unCanadian. I know there's a lot of stereotypes that make me think that, but I feel like Canadians can do better than petty rioting. I'm glad to hear that people are doing something about it.

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BP:

1. What a dick.
2. Brock! I thought only cartoons had that name!
3. its evidence!!!!!!!!

The (Boston) news also pointed out that in places like LA or Boston, there are plenty of other things to do, but in a place like Vancouver (in Canada, which is already a big hockey place), "that's all they have, so naturally they're more angry about the loss."

The Vancouver Sun has a page full of Youtube videos of the rioting. Lots of photos of the clean-up here.

No tensions that I'm aware of, msali, except for the usual stuff. The Vancouver Police Chief believes it was triggered by the same anarchist group that targeted the 2010 Summer Olympics.

"the same anarchist group that targeted the 2010 Summer Olympics" Aren't they mostly undercover cops?

I will never understand sports-related riots. But yeah, yay for just how many digital cameras are out there these days.