The 2013 NHL Season Thread

[Brass]

Good for Bryzgalov. The media is mostly filled with guys who have never put on a pair of skates in their life, so it's nice to see them reminded of that every once in a while.

[The_Admiral]

Bryz calls out the Philly media for being the oily, unpleasant media abscess that they are:

Just another big baby who can't hack it outside the country club teams. I'm sorry you're being held accountable for sucking.

Good for Bryzgalov. The media is mostly filled with guys who have never put on a pair of skates in their life, so it's nice to see them reminded of that every once in a while.

THAT JOHN MCCUB CAN'T RUN DA HAWKS HE CAN'T EVEN SKATE HERP DERP

[CS85]

Bryz calls out the Philly media for being the oily, unpleasant media abscess that they are:

Just another big baby who can't hack it outside the country club teams. I'm sorry you're being held accountable for sucking.

While I hate Philly on more or less as much zeal as anyone else, I feel like the guy was never destined to get a fair shake. They're some jaded bastards out there. It feels odd to even slightly defend a former Coyote. I need to take a shower.

[Still MIGHTY]

Bryz calls out the Philly media for being the oily, unpleasant media abscess that they are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChmN4rJFg_s

"What have you done for your city?"

[The_Admiral]

Maybe teams should hold official initiation ceremonies for their beat writers where they are not allowed to write about hockey until they have put on a pair of skates. So some old skates are handed out to the assembled press, they are made to skate a lap around the ice--even if they trip and fall, it's okay; players are standing by to help them along--and then when they reach the "finish line" as demarcated by a pair of sticks on the ice, they are officially allowed to write about hockey, for they have Put On Skates.

But it doesn't end there.

"Maybe they ought to take a check," a third-line winger shouts over the polite applause.

"Make 'em win board battles," shouts a thirteenth forward.

The light-hearted ceremony takes a turn for the sinister, as players and coaches start shepherding the skating writers back to their ad hoc starting line, mumbling "come on, let's go" and other such phrases which don't even begin to hint at what lies in store. "Skate, skate!", implores the head coach, as the writers embark upon their second lap along the boards. "We don't got all day!", shouts an assistant, as unconcerned with his grammar as he is with the welfare of the ink-stained wretches whose day will be one they won't soon forget.

The beat writers clumsily skate, holding onto one another in lieu of their once-helpful journalistic subjects. Their strides are graceless and tremulous. "Just like being out on the old pond, right?", a newspaper writer jokes to a blogger, trying in vain to defuse the situation. They hear behind them and on their left, "Here it comes!"

A thud is heard. The plexiglass rattles. A stanchion hints at dislodging. The other skating scribes stop as one of their own has been knocked to the ice by a well-placed body check. "Clean hit," a player laughs to the crowd. "Well, don't just stand there," he continues. They do. The winger's patience running thin, he checks each fear-petrified writer into the boards and down to the ice. The writers dutifully take their punishment, pervaded as they are by the overwhelming sense of guilt accrued from years of covering a sport they had never deigned to play. Shuddering, throbbing, fighting back tears of agony, the media contingent slowly pulls itself back up to its collective feet. Scared to say a word, they wait for further instructions from their "assignments," who have now become, at least in some sense of the word, their captors.

"I guess you can say now you've played The Game!", laughs the captain.

"Welcome to hockey, boys," adds the head coach.

The battle-scarred media, not knowing what to make of the situation, finds itself in polite applause, cutting the ponderous tension as only the waterfalls of golf claps can. They joke to one another, "some game, huh," "I guess now we really do know," "I hope our insurance will cover this!" They unlace their skates, their steel-bladed souvenirs of war, and throw them to the side for the equipment manager to round up and sharpen. In a way, one writer thinks to himself, you'd almost kind of want to take one home as a memory of what happened at the practice rink that fateful day. In another way, a way no one could have foreseen, the mere sight of an ice skate would mean a second mortgage to cover the therapy sessions. The writers trudge back to the dressing room to meet the players at their stalls for some soundbites. It seems, at the time, that the cloud of Never Having Played The Game has finally passed and given way to a sunshine of empathy and enlightenment. It seems.

"I took harder hits in junior!"

Footsteps cease. The din of friendly chatter turns to silence, which in turn gives way to anxious murmurs. The asswipe from the blog. Of course. Some people don't know when to let it go.

"Oh, you played junior?"

"You wanna talk about junior?"

"...well, it was USAHL. Or, well, a level below USAHL. I played."

He is lying.

The players are salivating like a ravenous pack of animals. This loudmouth. Shoves are exchanged. A defenseman is the proverbial Third Man In. Then comes a fourth, a fifth. The chirping blogger is quickly overtaken and thrown to the ground. Laces from the skates are used to bind his arms behind his back. A hand towel is fashioned into a blindfold. The players grab the writer, one at each end, and carry him out to the parking lot, where he is stuffed into the trunk.

"Oh, you want to talk about junior, you bitch? We'll show you what junior is all about."

The players drive for several miles, past the rink, into the suburbs, and into a nearby forest preserve. Turns are taken beating the man. Screams are heard before learned helplessness overtakes his pain, reducing him to the resigned silence of the condemned. He is stripped nude, as a mere matter of course. It's not long before critical areas of the man's epidermis are as pink as a Smithfield ham. Finally, the assault relents.

"Okay, okay. I never played the game," the man sobs. "I've never even covered hockey before. This was my first. This was. This was my first day."

The players knew this fact without his testimony, for no man who had ever Played The Game would have had the audacity displayed on the ice that afternoon. But they weren't through. If he hadn't played the game, and had no familiarity with hockey, then there was no better way to introduce the man to the game's unique culture than to supply him with a special treat.

"We're taking you to Timmy's," one of the players says.

"Who's Timmy?"

"Oh, for god's sake," mutters a player.

"And someone is waiting there for you," adds another, as a Cheshire Cat grin grows on his pockmarked, weathered face.

They drive to the local Tim Horton's, telling him that if this man were to continue to cover hockey, which in spite of the day's events he swore he wanted, there were certain procedures that had to take place. A procedure, the man would find out, that included none other than Dougie Gilmour, arguably the most rugged and Canadian of all rugged Canadians. But the blogger was aghast to discover how Mr. Gilmour would welcome him into the fraternity.

"...in...my mouth?"

"You have a better place in mind?" a player snickers.

"It's not exactly up to you," another player adds, owing to the eminently compromised position of the writer.

The car pulls up to the Tim Horton's. They enter through the back door, and the naked hog-tied blogger hopes that this will not prove to serve as a metaphor.

"On your knees!"

"Here's Dougie!"

The sounds, muffled as they may be by the ambient whirrs of donut-baking, are all too familiar to any post-pubescent male. The slapping. The heavy breathing. The hints of groans, barely held back. The endgame is inevitable, and the reality sets in. How will this man face his family at the end of this day, now night? How will he explain the late arrival, the sure-to-be-obvious limp? How will he undress for bed with these splotches and welts? How will he kiss his wife with a mouth that has unwillingly received another man's seed? even if that man was indeed the mighty spiritual leader of sports fans throughout Ontario?

"THIS IS FOR EVERYONE YOUR PEOPLE HAVE EVER WRONGED!", the man hears as the sounds of self-gratification escalate to the point where they can escalate no further. His jaw is held open to receive what he must receive.

It is there.

It is concussive in its release.

It is cloyingly vanilla.

"HAHA, WE GOT HIM, BOYS!", a player laughs. "Better give him the rest of a donut, too!" And so a plain donut is stuffed into his mouth. The blindfold is unfurled. Laughs are had. Hugs are shared. You see, the true initiation into the fraternity of hockey is simply to consume Tim Horton's donuts. The shenanigans beforehand were completely unnecessary, as they were for others before him, as they will be for those who follow. But hockey has its traditions, and we who have partaken in them know not to question them. I suppose it's obvious now.

"Now, my friend," he laughs with his arm around my shoulder, "now you can write whatever the hell you want about us."

"Now you've Played The Game."

[Still MIGHTY]

I really enjoy when you put though into things.

[fouhy12]

Maybe teams should hold official initiation ceremonies for their beat writers where they are not allowed to write about hockey until they have put on a pair of skates. So some old skates are handed out to the assembled press, they are made to skate a lap around the ice--even if they trip and fall, it's okay; players are standing by to help them along--and then when they reach the "finish line" as demarcated by a pair of sticks on the ice, they are officially allowed to write about hockey, for they have Put On Skates.

(Massive wall of text)

"Now you've Played The Game."

POTD?

[habsfan1]

Good for Bryzgalov. The media is mostly filled with guys who have never put on a pair of skates in their life, so it's nice to see them reminded of that every once in a while.

Agreed. Whether he sucks at goaltending or not, that's not the point. You always need to put your foot down when the finger is pointed at you, even if they are correct.

[njmeadowlanders]

Maybe teams should hold official initiation ceremonies for their beat writers where they are not allowed to write about hockey until they have put on a pair of skates. So some old skates are handed out to the assembled press, they are made to skate a lap around the ice--even if they trip and fall, it's okay; players are standing by to help them along--and then when they reach the "finish line" as demarcated by a pair of sticks on the ice, they are officially allowed to write about hockey, for they have Put On Skates.

(Massive wall of text)

"Now you've Played The Game."

POTD?

That's in the running for Post of the YEAR.

[officeglenn]

Good for Bryzgalov. The media is mostly filled with guys who have never put on a pair of skates in their life, so it's nice to see them reminded of that every once in a while.

Speaking as a member of the media who has covered (junior A) hockey in the past but hasn't skated for a good 20 years or so ...

Does one need to have been elected to city council to write about what's going on at city hall? Does one need to have taken basic training to write about the military? Does one need to have an MBA to write about business? Does one need to have crawled into a burning building to write about a house fire?

Then why is it different for sports?

I'll grant you that each of those experiences might give reporters a valuable measure of insight into each scenario. I'll also grant you that there are some beat writers, but mostly columnists — and beat writer vs. columnist is an important distinction that I don't think readers make often enough — at major metropolitan daily newspapers who only like to self-aggrandize and stir up, bleating something about being the voice of the common fan, and I have a particular disdain for those writers. But I assure you the vast majority of writers, regardless of whether or not they have ever put on a pair of skates in their life, are basing their stories on facts and careful observation of the game over many years.

[Kramerica Industries]

Maybe teams should hold official initiation ceremonies for their beat writers where they are not allowed to write about hockey until they have put on a pair of skates. So some old skates are handed out to the assembled press, they are made to skate a lap around the ice--even if they trip and fall, it's okay; players are standing by to help them along--and then when they reach the "finish line" as demarcated by a pair of sticks on the ice, they are officially allowed to write about hockey, for they have Put On Skates.

(Massive wall of text)

"Now you've Played The Game."

POTD?

That's in the running for Post of the YEAR.

I think a few other of his posts have provided competition on that front.

[CS85]

(wall of text)

That was unreal. I didn't expect that to go where it went at all.

You had me at "cloyingly vanilla."

[FGM13]

Maybe teams should hold official initiation ceremonies for their beat writers where they are not allowed to write about hockey until they have put on a pair of skates. So some old skates are handed out to the assembled press, they are made to skate a lap around the ice--even if they trip and fall, it's okay; players are standing by to help them along--and then when they reach the "finish line" as demarcated by a pair of sticks on the ice, they are officially allowed to write about hockey, for they have Put On Skates.

(Massive wall of text)

"Now you've Played The Game."

POTD?

That's in the running for Post of the YEAR.

I think a few other of his posts have provided competition on that front.

This one tops it all. POTD all the way

[charger77]

Colorado wins the lottery, Florida gets #2 the rest stays the same.

[charger77]

[rvrdgsfn]

Colorado wins the lottery, Florida gets #2 the rest stays the same.

Looks like Seth is going back to where it all started.

[BigEd76]

Tell me that lottery wasn't fixed. I didn't know David Stern ran hockey too

[NEW.ERA]

I got the feeling too.

I think the Flames would make decent trade partners with Tampa Bay to move into the top 3. We got the picks to do it.

[Sport]

Florida is gonna pick Mackinnon. Not a bad consolation prize. Now don't f*** him up.

[rvrdgsfn]

Florida is gonna pick Mackinnon. Not a bad consolation prize. Now don't f*** him up.

It's Florida, they'll find a way.