Building a new rivalry usually takes time. There’s some kind of major slight involved, or a bunch of smaller slights that add up, or sometimes just a particularly brutal playoff series. For most fans, it takes awhile to definitively say “Yeah, we hate those guys.”
Take Nashville, for example. After the 2015-16 playoff series against them, a good chunk of Sharks fans were dreading their return to San Jose. With the triple overtime game that the Sharks should’ve won, there were some lingering hard feelings.
But with the Sharks out of playoffs and the Predators facing off against the Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final this year, plenty of Sharks fans are pushing for Nashville to take out the team that defeated the Sharks last post-season.