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Municipalities let 'Nucks fans cheer on own

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Sharla Takimoto

While the City of Vancouver will feed NHL playoff fever by rolling out two big TV screens every game, hockey fans in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows will have to go to their favourite living room or pub to see the Canucks’s run to the Stanley Cup.

Neither municipality is opening any of its public spaces and offering the game on big screens.

Vancouver announced Tuesday two giant screens on trucks will be rolled into the downtown for each playoff game when the Vancouver Canucks take on the Boston Bruins.

That could create excitement similar to that of the Winter Olympic Games in February 2010.

Nanaimo  will also have the playoffs on a big screen in Diana Krall Plaza, while Surrey will have a big screen at Central City near 102nd Avenue and King George Boulevard.

Abbotsford will have some of the games in the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre, home of the Calgary Flames farm team, the Abbotsford Heat.

In Maple Ridge, the Arts Centre Theatre has no cable or satellite connection, said spokesperson Fred Armstrong. “I haven’t heard of anything else that is being planned.”

Neither is Pitt Meadows, said spokesperson Lorna Jones.

“No plans for us – just supporting them and cheering them on.”

Pitt Meadows Mayor Don MacLean will be among those cheering the Canucks, even though he was born in Boston.

He moved to Toronto when he was young, then became a Bruins fan by default, he explained. When he relocated to B.C. in 1971, he became a Canucks fan.

“Canucks were brand new. I remember Orland Kurtenbach. That was a pretty sad team.

“Go Canucks,” MacLean said. “I don’t even have a second choice.”

The Canucks start Game 1 tonight in Vancouver trying to win their first Stanley Cup after 40 years of  in the NHL.