None of the Following is True. Enjoy.
Reporting is hard work. You have to chase leads, often ones that go nowhere, putting in hours of work for small stories that may not even get any attention. You have to call countless people to obtain, check, and crosscheck information which can be tedious. You have to try to get quotes from people who are talking to you only out of obligation and don’t really want to be there. I tried it(seriously- TSC LINK).
Fortunately, I came to my senses pretty quickly. I will leave pointless pursuits like ‘investigative reporting’ and ‘gathering useful information’ to schmucks like Dregger and Lazzo. It’s way easier, and way more fun to make stuff up. So I’m going to stick with that for now.
If any of the following statements bear any sort of resemblance to reality, it is purely due to coincidence. Or accident. I’m not sure which, and I’m only an English minor, not a major, so I can’t be expected to know the difference between that sort of stuff. Anyways, here are some lies.
Matt Cooke’s 10 Point Defense
Matt Cooke, to the chagrin of exactly no one, had the book thrown at him by the NHL’s league offices this week. After a flagrant cheap shot on Ryan McDunagh of the New York Rangers, Cooke was told to go play by himself for a while when he was suspended by the league for the remainder of the regular season and the first round.
1. My owner thought we should get rid of cheap shots and goonery next year.
2. (Requisite Gregory Campbell joke…let’s go with) I wanted to help the Bruins, who could face the Rangers in the playoffs. We are on the same page, here, Colie.
3. I was trying to help the game. It was a nationally televised. The WWE had way more headshots than hockey and their ratings were awesome. It is about growth in the sunbelt, right Gary? They LOVED that crap. I am an ambassador here.
4. I wasn’t looking at McDonagh’s numbers, but rather his number, when I ran him from behind and tried to put my elbow through his earlobe. That number? 7. That other number could just as easily been a 1, rather than a 2, which would have made it 17, which is very close to 16. Do you know who 16 is? Sean Avery. Under the proposed amendment to Rule 48, Rule 48.1, hitting a defenseless Sean Avery in the head would not only be legal, but failing to do so would be a suspendable offense. It was the prudent thing to do.
5. I haven’t done anything to the Boston Bruins in a while. (We’re doing more Campbell jokes? Okay, I guess we’re doing more Campbell jokes.)
6. Mario says…Mario? Hey…bossman? Buddy? Damn.
7. Without Crosby and Malkin, no one will really notice if you just let Cooke continue to play for Pittsburgh anyways.
8. It wasn’t nearly as bad as his hit on Tyutin, and you didn’t do anything about that.
9. If suspended, I will drive to Montreal and remind them that Chara wasn’t suspended, leading to two more weeks of asinine moralizing and posturing from the Montreal fans and media. No one wants that, but if this is my ace in the hole, I have no choice.
10. Wait, who do we play on the last day of the season? The Thrashers? Evander Kane’s Thrashers? I DID IT! I DID IT! GUILTY AS CHARGED, I WAS TRYING TO TAKE HIS HEAD OFF! PLEASE, SUSPEND ME!
Turns out Daniel Sedin just had a kid. Weird. I kind of pictured him and Henrik living together, probably with their parents. I don’t know, I guess I just have a hard time imagining married identical twins. I guess this doesn’t necessarily rule that out.
Ovi’s Injuries
Alexander Ovechkin has been shut down for a couple of the weeks due to undisclosed nagging injuries. The main takeaway is that if you are one of the haters who is somehow happy that Ovechkin and/or Crosby is out, you deserve to dump the puck in with Matt Cooke charging from behind you, while wearing skate guards, with no helmet.
While it is unfortunate that Ovechkin will miss the next few games, especially if you dropped $100+ on tickets or else if you are planning to watch the games. On top of that, there has been no word out of Washington as to what Ovechkin’s injuries actually are. Fortunately, I was able to obtain the Capitals training report, and therefore I have the down low on what is ailing Ovechkin. It is actually a variety of things that have combined to bring the superstar down.
- Sore calves from leaving his feet to hit defensemen.
- Concussion symptoms. It explains the need to wear a tinted visor in a brightly lit rink.
- Concussion symptoms. Explains his entire disposition towards the English language.
- Partially separated shoulder from jumping into the boards celebrating goals.
- Back issues from carrying the Capitals to the Presidents’ Trophy last year without a bona fide #1 goaltender and with Alexander Semin essentially mailing in the entire year.
- Whiplash from going from 1 to 100 in 7 seconds in his M6.
- Whiplash from turning around to see what the hell Boudreau is swearing about this time.
The Montreal Police Department’s Next 5 Cases
Following the hit that left Max Paccioretty with a concussion and fractured vertebre, and the city of Montreal with a fractured sense of reality, a host of Montrealers bravely spoke up, calling 911 to do the right thing, and make sure that the Montreal Police had the chance and the incentive to bring CHara to justice, since the city had solved literally every other problem it faced. Well, actually, almost every other problem it faced. There were, in fact, 5 other things that the MPD hope to take care of so that Montral can be a utopia of peace, harmony and prosperity. Here they are.
1. Investigating charges of reckless abandonment against Bob Gainey.
2. Charging Mike Millbury, Don Cherry, and the rest of the hockey media with slander based on the perpetuation of French Canadians as enigmatic, moody and soft headcases. Chief witnesses, should this go to trial, are expected to include Mike Ribiero, Guilleme Latandresse, official Stephane Auger, and Alex Burrows, who will be working together on the case.
3. There have been reports from a few people that something called a “Montreal Expos” has gone missing sometime in the last 5 or 6 years. It is alleged that this supposed major sports franchise was taken across the south border, and United States Government activity is suspected due to the last sightings of the team. Unfortunately, very few Montrealers are able to collaborate that the franchise ever existed.
4. A detailed, undercover investigation of Bono, centering around how he somehow managed to get run of the mill flavor of the week pop song ‘Vertigo’ to replace what may well have been the best goal song in the league.
5. A missing person report, for Jaroslav Halak, when Carey Price turns back into Carey Price and the Habs are bounced from the playoffs in the first round.
I swear I totally had VCU over Virginia Commonwealth in the first game of the final four. Just like everyone else.
(FACT WARNING: I know I probably come off as some sort of Magary fanboy all the time in this column, but doesn’t VCU making the Final like, 100% validate his point about that asinine first round ruining the brackets? I mean didn’t pretty much everyone just have VCU going out in the first round by virtue of them not actually being in the tournament when people started mapping out their brackets? And of the .0000001% of civilized society that did have the 11 seed from that region in the final four, wouldn’t most of them have done so with USC in mind, based on name recognition? THAT TOTALLY FUCKS UP THE INTEGRITY OF THE CRAPSHOOT GAMBLING THAT IS THE NCAA TOURNAMENT! Sure, we know absolutely nothing about the teams we pick unless you are Andy Katz or some Duke dipshit or something like that, but still. You should at least have to know which team you are blindly picking. IT’S ONLY FAIR!
..okay, factISH warning would have been more appropriate)
Future Considerations
You hear it all the time in trade jargon. Future considerations. As in ‘the Sharks trade Derek Joslin to the Hurricanes for future considerations.” How often do you actually hear what those future considerations actually are? Almost never, that’s how often. It turns out that whenever these ‘considerations’ come to fruition, they are listed on a special NHL.com page that you can only access if you type the correct code into the player search bar. I recently acquired this code. While if I were to give the code away, ObstructedViewSports.net would be forcibly shut down by a team of Gary Betteman’s goons (this is actually the crux of Brendan Shanahan’s job with the league), I am able to tell you some of he considerations, and it turns out that there were plenty of trades that didn’t even have future considerations that actually had them written into the fine print. Here are a few.
Joslin to CAR for FC- It is a common misconception that this deal led to the Sharks getting Ian White on the cheap just a day later, but that actually isn’t the case. The actual future considerations were only that the Hurricanes now have to pay Joslin’s salary, and Doug Wilson gets to use Ron Francis’s house on the Outer Banks for 1 week each August.
Kessel and FC to TOR for two 1st round picks- This is our first example of a trade with unannounced future considerations. Unfortunately for the Leafs, the considerations have nothing to do with top-10 protection on the draft picks (luckily for Tyler Seguin). Instead, the considerations that Burke insisted upon consisted of a loosely worded request that Chirelli consider giving one of the picks back for Tomas Kaberle. According to NHL.com, these considerations were fulfilled.
