Just Say No To Arbitration

Zach avoided arbitration by signing a one-year deal today. We should probably be breaking down what this means for the Devils’ weekend, but it’s 4pm on a lazy summer Saturday, so instead we’d like to focus on something else that caught our eyes in hockey journalism this week. On Monday, the estimable Tom Gulitti posted part one of a fan Q&A with Travis. Included among the queries was this:

“Travis: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite movie:
1) Stargate
2) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
3) Back to the Future
4) The Mighty Ducks”

Gentle Reader, this might be the greatest construct for questions ever. It’s not “what’s your favorite movie”, it’s “I don’t give a crap about you; what’s your favorite of my favorite movies”. Only, in this case (and with all due respect to the questioner) it’s a bunch of crappy movies (and “Raiders”, which we’ve got no beef with), one of which Travis had to admit he’d never seen. Think of the possibilities!

Zach: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite cookie:
1) Graham cracker
2) Chocolate chip
3) Un-adorned sugar cookie
4) Fig newton

Marty: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite Star Trek episode:
1) Sub Rosa
2) Darmok
3) Rascals
4) Trouble with Tribbles

Patty: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite color:
1) Jade green
2) Red
3) Ice blue
4) Pukey brownish purple

Zubrus: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite quilt pattern:
1) Mariner’s Compass
2) Trip Around the World
3) Star of Bethlehem
4) Drunkard’s Path

Tedenby: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite painting:
1) Death of Socrates
2) Raft of the Medusa
3) Three Musicians
4) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Whichever Sesito, if any, is still on the team: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite pepper:
1) Jalapeno
2) Joe’s Long Cayenne
3) Sargent
4) Green bell

Josefson: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite book:
1) The Sound and the Fury
2) The Count of Monte Cristo
3) The Corrections
4) Shopaholic

Whitey: Which of the following would you choose as your favorite activity:
1) Not swimming
2) Swimming

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Welcome to the Family, Coach!

Break out the cymballs, the Devils have a new coach!

Break out the solid gold cymballs because that new coach isn’t Hitchock or Therrien! In that respect, we think Lou did a bang-up job. We are a wee bit sad, though, that he didn’t go with the coaching plan we suggested. You see, we want to make sure Adam Larsson is getting the best start to his career as the Greatest Devil Ever. Making him the top draft pick to not have individual bonuses was a great first step, but Lou can do even more. He can hire Jacques Lemaire. Lemarie could then coach for half a season before deciding to retire “for good”. Then Larry Robinson could step in, passing along invaluable Hall-of-Famer defensive lessons Larsson needs. 20 games later, Robinson could step down for “health reasons”. The next 20 games could be handled by Lou, of course. Duh! Then, as the Devils stumble into the playoffs, Lou could blame himself for their 8th-place finish and replace himself with Jacques again. And that is how Adam Larsson is going to learn how to be a true Devil.

But, we suppose Pete DeBoer is an okay alternative to that plan.

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Shout Out! Shout Out! Civil War Sesquicentennial Shout Out!

Being really smart people, we do occasionally read actual books rather than just hockey blogs; one book one of us recently started the laborious process of plowing through is “Battle Cry of Freedom”. It seemed a reasonably non-hockey-themed undertaking to help fill the summer hours, so imagine our surprise when we discovered in its pages one of the most obvious IPB shout-outs ever. Smack-dab in the middle of a description of the Union army’s tactical advantages on the Mississippi was the story of the ironclad river boats known as…

…wait for it…

…Pook’s turtles.

We are not making this up.

This being a clear reference to us from beyond the grave, we felt we needed to enlist Boxworthy to do a little Civil War reenactment.

We’ve done exhaustive reading since our first discovery of the term “Pook’s Turtle” (by “exhaustive reading” we mean “googled it and read the wikipedia entry”), and we can say with some confidence that Boxworthy’s costume is utterly historically accurate. That is exactly what Pook’s Turtles looked like.

One of the benefits of having a highly detailed and historically accurate CivilWar ironclad river ship costume is that, when the sesquicentennial celebrations are over and all the armchair Civil War buffs lose interest in playing at dress-up with him, Boxworthy will be perfectly accoutered to join the ranks of Red Wings bloggers.

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Yeah, We Know How To Live Right

We sometimes get asked by friends and colleagues how we manage to be so happy all the time (they clearly don’t read this blog), and our answer is always that we just happen to be very good at letting the little things in life delight us. And when we say “the little things”, we really mean it. For example, we’re having spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce for dinner tonight, one of our favorite meals, and we had this exchange about it:

Schnookie, smugly: There’s a special surprise ingredient in tonight’s dinner, Pookie.
Pookie, excited: Oh? Really? What?
Schnookie: What ingredient can turn a weeknight… into heaven?
Pookie: SAUSAGE!

Seriously. It takes so little. It really makes us wonder how the Devils have gone so wrong by us.

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