About

"Why You Heff to be Mad?" is a memorable quote said by Russian professional ice hockey goaltender Ilya Bryzagalov in response to a journalist's question about his fellow Anaheim Ducks teammate Chris Pronger during a post-game interview in 2006.

Origin

In 2006, Ilya Bryzagalov, the goaltender for the National Hockey League's Anaheim Ducks at the time, participated in a post-game interview with the Canadian sports news outlet The Score. During the interview, the reporter asked the athlete how he felt about his fellow teammate Chris Pronger who joined the Anaheim Ducks after a controversial departure from the Edmonton Oilers, to which Bryzagalov responded:

"That's a hockey, ya know? It's only game. Why you have to be mad? He's a good guy. He may be tired to live here because here is a November month is a -32. Could you imagine? It's a eight months and eight months and a year snow."

On December 18th, YouTuber greyszee uploaded the interview clip in which Bryzagalov incredulously asks the question “why you have to be mad?” in a Russian accent. In the following seven years, the video gained over 900,000 views and 1,400 comments.

Spread

On December 1st, 2007, The Chicago Maroon^[5] student newspaper highlighted the video in a blog post titled "Why you have to be mad? It's a hockey." The clip remained relatively unknown until June 23rd, 2011, when HF Boards^[4] member Mosetter27 posted the video in a thread requesting an explanation of Bryzgalov's statements. On November 10th, YouTuber meRyanP^[1] reuploaded the clip, gaining over 2.6 million views and 2,600 comments in the next three years. On February 23rd, 2012, YouTuber Emil Axelsson uploaded a video titled "EA Sports, it's only a game!," which featured an animated logo for the video game company EA Sports followed by the Bryzagalov clip (shown below, left). On August 6th, YouTuber tjeaton2405 posted a dubstep remix of the Bryzagalov clip (shown below, right).

On June 12th, Redditor Kablooey88 submitted YouTuber RyanP's upload of the video to the /r/youtubehaiku^[3] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 1,700 upvotes and 25 comments. On September 14th, a Facebook^[2] page titled "It's only game, why you heff to be mad?" was launched.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References