Vancouver Stanley Cup riot focus of new documentary

The 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot that brought chaos to the city will be the feature of an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary.

The sports outlet says production on the feature, titled I’m Just Here for the Riot, has wrapped up, though it’s still unclear when exactly it’ll be released.

“Taking a subject like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and the ensuing riot – and using that event to tell an even bigger story about society – is what makes 30 for 30 so special,” said Marsha Cooke, vice president and executive producer, ESPN Films and 30 for 30.

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“The filmmakers had a clear POV: they wanted to explain not just what happened, but why. Why do we get so caught up in the emotions of winning and losing? Why do normal people sometimes run amok and do things they regret? And in a world dominated by cell phones and social media, why do we feel compelled to capture everything, no matter how destructive it might be? It is a story about regret and shame, but profoundly, it’s also about how you rebuild, forgive, and try to find something meaningful in the aftermath.”

The infamous riot broke out on June 15, 2011, after the Vancouver Canucks lost the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals to the Boston Bruins. The loss sparked mayhem through the downtown core, with tens of thousands of people flooding into the streets, smashing windows, overturning and burning police cars, looting stores, shattering windows, destroying storefronts and other infrastructure, and even turning to violence against each other.

“It was just so upsetting to layer this on to what was happening within your own building,” TC Carling, who was the Canucks vice-president of communications and community partnerships at the time, said of the events that played out. “We’ve got the most devastating loss in all of these athletes’ careers. And then to see what was happening outside was even more disappointing.”

ESPN says the events were chronicled in hundreds of cell phone videos, adding rioters were “outed, shamed, and their lives altered forever.”

“From the mob mentality in the streets to similar vengeance in the online hunting of those responsible, it was a dark moment in the city’s history – one that raised deeper questions about fandom, violence, and the shocking power of an angry crowd,” the company explained.

Images from the riot and its aftermath still haunt the city more than a decade later. The damage cost almost $9 million.

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In the end, at least 140 people were hurt, while more than 100 arrests were made. Many of them would be taken to court over the five years after the events played out.

The 2011 riot happened almost exactly 17 years after the 1994 Stanley Cup Riot, which broke out after the Canucks lost to the New York Rangers.

-With files from Sportsnet, Robyn Crawford, and Mike Lloyd