This is the sixth in our summer series in which we are drawing hockey cards at random from a box and then writing about them.
On a night when our Xbox died before we got a chance to try out Grand Theft Auto IV even once, and on a night when our DVD player died before we got a chance to watch (and diarize) an episode of MacGyver wherein Mac rides to the rescue of a Minnesota-based hockey team, and on a night when the only thing in our TiVo is an episode of Man vs. Wild where the HD camera lingers a disgustingly long time on Bear Grylls eating a yak eyeball, we really wouldn’t have minded drawing an interesting card. We’re not asking for a Pando card, or a Sid card, or even a Staffy or Travis. We would just like someone we’ve heard of.
So what did the PBS box present to us tonight?
What is going on?! What did we do to deserve this?! Waaaaita minute… [Checks calendar].
Oh.
Right.
Friday the 13th. We should’ve guessed. Bryan Little is a cursed player, evidently. That might be bad news for Thrashers fans, since the back of the card kind of suggests that this Little kid might be a decent prospect. The good news, though, is that in this picture he’s demonstrating perfect technique for skating as quickly and urgently away from Bobby Holik as humanly possible. It’s an essential survival tactic, and Little executes it as perfectly as Bear might if there was a Man vs. Wild episode set in the Atlanta Thrashers dressing room. In fact, that blue mouthguard he’s got on kind of looks like he’s chewing cinematically on a yak eyeball. Next up he’s going to use that skatelace he’s got tied around his waist to construct a rope ladder to use to escape if he gets stuck in the penalty box at the same time as Holik. As Bear would say solemnly, just a few seconds in the box with Holik can kill you.
