38 Things You Don't Know About This Hockey Season So Far

1. The Ducks are still going to win the President’s Trophy. They are going to have a shocking last three quarters of the season.

2. Phil Kessel has written in his diary that he plans to score 700 goals this year for the Leafs. Needless to say, Brian Burke secretly reads all of his players’ diaries, and he totally believes that Kessel shouldn’t have any trouble accomplishing this plan.

3. Scott Clemmensen blamed everyone else on the Panthers for his lousy goaltending thus far, but the real reason for it (beside the fact that he’s not a very good goaltender) is that he’s lost his focus because he spends his games wondering if Team USA has called to ask him to start for them at the Olympics yet. He is considering carrying his cell phone out on the ice with him, just so he can take the call in person when it comes.

4. We have purchased the Phoenix Coyotes for just four easy installments of $49.95. We promised Gary Bettman that we wouldn’t relocate them, but that was a lie — we’re planning to move them to New Jersey, where they will play under our Christmas tree, as a gift to Boomer. It’s the sort of once-in-a-lifetime gift-giving opportunity that a true hockey fan can’t resist.

5. The tiff that resulted in a Flames player shouting “you’re selfish” to Dion Phaneuf was the result of Robyn Regher wishing to let all his teammates try his new recipe for Jungle Party Nuts, an homage to the Brazilian snack he loved as a child.

6. Vinny Lecavalier isn’t just having a slump. He’s having a Hooters Baby. Or, perhaps more accurately, a Mrs. Thunderbug Baby.

7. Milan Lucic would have you believe his broke his finger doing something cavemanly like fighting or clubbing baby seals, but the truth is, he broke it wrestling with Fancylynne, his pet hermit crab.

8. Scott Gomez can’t figure out why everyone in his new city talks funny.

9. His new city can’t figure out why he can’t play responsible defense.

10. Craig Anderson is actually being played this season by identical triplets named Craig, Chris and Conrad. Craig by himself is only one third as good as the entity currently known as “Craig Anderson”.

11. Linda Staal had a curse placed on her by a mysterious crone 30 years ago. The curse was that she would bear strapping sons who would all see great early success in their chosen fields, but would quickly suffer steep declines, taking their coworkers down with them. It’s happening already with Hooters and the Canes, so the Pens and Rangers should probably start worrying that they’re next.

12. Carol Niedermayer had a curse placed on her by a mysterious crone 45 years ago. The curse was that she would bear strapping sons who would see great success in their chosen fields, but they would both be doomed to finish their professional lives in North Jersey. It’s happening already.

13. Scott Niedermayer has been wearing a Devils sweater under his Ducks one all this time. But we still hate him anyway.

14. The Minnesota Wild have been tanking this season in protest about Pierre McGuire not being hired for their GM position.

15. Zach Parise had a curse place on him by a mysterious crone yesterday. The curse is he’s never going to score again.

16. Ryan Getzlaf is planning to time the release date of his debut album, “Getzi Warbles: The Voice Of An Angel”, with the Olympic gold medal game. He is hoping that Team Canada will not make it that far in the tournament, so he can be in Regina for the release party.

17. A scientific study based in Stockholm studied the meekest of the meek and discovered, without a smidgen of doubt, that Jonathan Toews is the single most pick-on-able human on the face of the Earth.

18. There are no fewer than six NHLers with tattoos of unicorns. Remarkably, Jonathan Toews is not one of them.

19. Until he read #17 on this list, Toews had an appointment to get a unicorn tattooed on his bicep over the Olympic break.

20. The reason for Ryan Miller’s remarkable start to this season is that he finally got the joke of the play on words “Miller Time”. He now chortles to himself every time he puts on his mask, and has discovered that he plays better when his frown has been turned upside down. He is considering unveiling a new play on words for the playoffs, something like “Miller Lite”, which could be a joke about how much weight he loses during the course of a season.

21. Jeff Carter is among those wishing the Coytoes would relocate; he finds the lack of Fuddruckers establishments in the Phoenix GMA makes it a troubling city to play in.

22. The Sharks had high hopes for what Dany Heatley would bring to the table on the ice, but have been pleasantly surprised at what he’s brought off the ice — namely, the Senators’ traditional season-long, ongoing Tiddlywinks tourney. All of the Sharks players give him the credit for their excellent team-building, but he demurs that he is nowhere near as good a Tiddlywinks organizer as Jason Spezza.

23. Mike Richards will join the Twitter masses as soon as he can get an army of ghost-writers who will write pithy jabs at Holmgren in exchange for free Kenora Township garbage tags.

24. Anze Kopitar is a distant relative of Jay Pandolfo’s, by marriage.

25. Shea Weber’s father wanted to name him “Sean”, but his mother wanted to name him “Xerxes”. That’s why his middle name is “Shxerxesan”.

26. Ryan Miller isn’t convinced that “Shxerxesan” isn’t a play on words.

27. The popularity of Movember is well documented among hockey teams this year, but the Devils plan to blow everyone’s minds with their own 11th-month facial hair plan next year. The team will continue to follow team rules and thus will celebrate “No-vember”.

28. Ryan Miller isn’t convinced that “No-vember” isn’t a play on words.

29. Making fun of Ryan Miller is like picking low-hanging fruit.

30. Ryan Miller is very confident “low-hanging fruit” is a play on words.

31. Steven Stamkos is a figment of everyone’s imagination. The easiest way to defend against him is to say directly to his face, “You have no power over me.”

32. At the recent GM meetings, three of the GMs participating in a secret ballot voted for more head shots in the NHL.

33. Fabian Brunnstrom had an action-packed summer vacation. While thumbing through a box of discounted sheet music at an antiquarian book store in Europe, he discovered a note scrawled on what appeared to be an original libretto for “Le Nozze Di Figaro” that hinted at a shocking secret, hundreds of years old. The note led him to team up with Athena Thwakwalker, a long-legged, raven-haired musicologist from the University of Austria, in a race against time and the Operati to save humankind from a terrible evil. He was able to save the world and get the girl before training camp begun. (And he bought an original libretto of “Figaro” at a bargain basement price because the bumbling shopkeeper didn’t know what treasure he was selling.)

34. John Tavares’s addiction to saltwater taffy could very well be his undoing.

35. It is purely coincidence, but every single player on the Thrashers roster is terrified of amphibians.

36. While discussing innovative ways to increase revenue to help pay for some of their massive player contracts, Red Wings management put serious thought into introducing a third color so as to be able to make a snazzy third jersey. The choices came down to “Sea Pine”, “Lavender Mist”, and “Electro-Cobalt”, before cooler heads prevailed.

37. Duncan Keith cheats at Bananagrams.

38. In researching this post, we discovered that TJ Oshie, if he could be any animal, would be a unicorn (scroll down to the Q&A at the bottom of the page). That doesn’t mean that he’s one of the six or more players with unicorn tattoos, though. But it also doesn’t mean he isn’t.

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