Video: Green Men of Vancouver, your current playoff MVPs

Yahoo! Sports

Fri Apr 16 09:59am EDT

Video: Green Men of Vancouver, your current playoff MVPs

The Canucks Green Men, the body-suited super fans who mock opposing players as they stew in the penalty box at GM Place, became infamous after their gyrating performance for penalized Nashville Predators became a YouTube classic last December. Their hockey legend has grown into an official Web site and Facebook page with 28,000 fans.

In Game 1 of the Vancouver Canucks' Western Conference playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night, they unleashed an acrobatic display of taunting against Kings defenseman Jack Johnson (notes) — including a full headstand.

Hey, it's the playoffs: Everyone raises their game. The Canucks went on to win in overtime, 3-2.

For the uninitiated, the Green Men were revealed by the Vancouver Sun as British Columbia Institute of Technology students Ryan Sullivan and Adam Forsythe, whose Green Men alter-egos go by Sully and Force.

They initially wanted to use the "Green Man" gimmick at a Seattle Seahawks game, but the bodysuits they ordered arrived too late for the game. The NFL's loss was the NHL's gain. The rest of the inspiration, according to Sully in an interview with Nucks Misconduct:

After watching an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which is where the Greenman originates from, we both looked at each other and I do believe we actually yelled "Eureka" at the same time. It was a little weird, but we knew it was fate. We knew we had to become Greenmen and go to a Canucks game. As for hesitations, there was a few ... I mean we aren't really wearing anything so that was a concern... and the first game we went to, it was about minus-5, so as we walked from our car to GM Place, it was quite tempting to bail out. I'm sure glad we didn't though!

So say we all. Read more about the Green Men from the Canucks' Web site.

We hope to see more of their antics during the playoffs, as they've become as much an essential part of Canucks hockey as Swedish twins, agitating forwards and the impending playoff disappoint of Roberto Luongo (notes), last night's amazing save notwithstanding.

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