Hey Look! Open Letters On A Mail Holiday! What Will We Think Of Next?

Dear NHL,

Contrary to what you might think, Columbus Day is not a holiday that is widely observed by employers in the US. Perhaps some of the games scheduled today that featured two American teams could have been saved for any of the “no games scheduled” days later this season?

Just a thought,
The Ookies

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Dear Tom Gulitti,

We truly think you are the greatest beat-reporter blogger in the business, and we are inclined to agree with you that Ilya Kovalchuk alone is not going to cure the Devils attendance woes. But please read the above open letter to the NHL. In light of our observations there, perhaps the attendance for today’s game should not be viewed as a definitive statement about Kovalchuk’s worthiness as a big draw.

If you’d like to stand by your statement, though, we guess you’re free to be as disingenuous as you want.

Passive-aggressively,
The Ookies

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Dear Tom Gulitti,

Maybe it wasn’t Kovalchuk who was the problem. Maybe it was Crosby.

Blowing your mind,
Boomer

**********

Dear Devils,

Please see the above letters.

Yes, we had to work today. Pookie also had to work late today. That means we have the choice of tivoing your game that was stupidly scheduled when we are both at work, and then watching it beginning at 10:00 pm after Pookie gets home. In light of your effort in your previous two games, we opted not to. Thanks for proving us right not to bother.

Lovin’ Losin’,
The Ookies

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Wherein We Go Like Elsie

Katebits and Heather have genius bits — their most recent discovery is that there are shocking parallels between the Sabres and the “Sound Of Music”. This got us wondering about whether there was a Nazi-themed musical that applies to the Devils; surely the Sabres aren’t the only ones. After much consideration of the many, many Nazi-themed musicals we’re familiar with, we realized that Sabres fans are not, indeed, the only lucky ones. Because the Devils? Are all “Cabaret”, baby!

First of all, like the proposal Katebits and Heather made to use “Climb Every Mountain” as the new Sabres goal song, the Devils could get their own signature goal song this way as well. How about “Cabaret”?

Right now goals scored at The Rawk are followed by the fans “Hey”ing along with whatever it is the PA system blares (we can’t remember — did they end up caving on their principles and stepping off the “Gary Glitter is a pedophile” refusal of “Rock and Roll Part 2”?). But if we went with “Cabaret”, everyone would get to leap to their feet not just in joyous celebration of a goal, but also in the irresistible urge to belt along with Liza. Seriously, what good is sitting alone in your room when you could be cheering along with a whole Rawkful of other Devils fans? Life is a cabaret old friend indeed!

But this connection between team and Nazi-themed musical runs deeper than just the raddest goal song ever. Think about it. Who do Sally and the MC remind you of in this number?

It’s Kovalchuk (Sally) and Lou (the MC)! It’s been staring us in the face all along! Who’s that knocking on the window? Gasp! Salary Cap!

Now that we’ve blown your mind with the obvious MC/Lou thing, it’s time to imagine Lou’s take on “Wilkommen”. At first we thought his version would be just, “Welcome,” and nothing else. But then we found this version:

Wow. It makes even more sense now, if that’s even possible. There’s his orchestra analogy! And the team does dog it! And many of the players are beautiful, assuming you have low standards!

Anyway, perhaps the most exciting thing about this discovery about our team is that we can take this one step further: if Kovalchuk is Sally, and Lou is the MC… then someone has to be the Nazis. But who? Who can it be?

Why, it’s Gary Bettman! Yep, we finally, after over three years of blogging, have made the moronic Bettman-is-Hitler connection. Today we earned our blogger stripes. Cue “Cabaret”!

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1-2-3 Hockey: Wherein We Notice Something Unusual About Jonathan Toews That WILL Blow Your Mind, We Guarantee It. (If It Doesn’t Blow Your Mind We’ll Give You Your Money Back, Or Rather, The Closest Thing To That. Namely: Not Making You Watch “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” Movies.)

1-2-3 Hockey: 43 of 45

Behold our newest handmade creation — Hooters H. Puffinstuff, the felt owl! He was made (roughly) from a pattern in “Fa la la la Felt”, and considering how quick and fun it was to make him, we suspect there will be plenty more to come. (Although not all of them will have such perfect vintage-button eyeballs…)

We blogged all about him here.

NOW, ON TO OUR NEW HOCKEY CONTENT!

Midway through the “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” series there was a change in actor portraying Colleen, Dr. Mike’s awkward, brainy, aspiring-doctor adopted teenaged daughter. The first actor was an ungainly blonde girl, and the replacement one was a waifish, nasal-voiced, marble-mouthed, not-even-remotely-lookalike brunette. And as the series progressed with the faux Colleen, we couldn’t help but wonder why our thoughts kept wandering to Jonathan Toews.

Oh yeah, that’s right — because Jonathan Toews was the replacement actor playing Colleen.

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An Open Letter To The Devils After Learning They Knew The Kovalchuk Contract Would Be Rejected By The NHL, But Went Ahead With The Press Conference Anyway

Dear Devils,

Fuck you too.

Coldly,
The Ookies

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Ilya Kovalchuk: Inventing The Concept Of An In-Limbo Maybe-Devil

The scene: ChucklesNation International airport, in the deserted arrivals hall.

Gary Bettman darts out of a shadowy doorway, slinks around the perimeter of the hall, forages a half-eaten cinnabon from a garbage can, hisses softly at the Ookies, then scurries away.

The Ookies: “We got our cymballs out of storage for that?”

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Deep Devils Thoughts

Some thoughts we have on the Devils lately:

– We are very lucky that our team has, every year since the lockout, given us the opportunity to watch them be the best team in hockey for a substantial stretch of time. Not every fan gets to say that, and we really enjoy it. We don’t want to sound ungrateful, or suggest that we don’t appreciate those five-, six-, seven-, whatever-week runs where we can’t help but think about how not a single team in the league could take four of seven against our boys. But the problem with the Devils doing that every season is that they haven’t timed that run very well since ’05-’06. And they fall off a fucking cliff every February. You know what makes a colossally awful stretch run even more interminable than the lousy hockey is on its own? Having to watch that lousy hockey while knowing — having incontrovertible proof — that the very same group of players and coaches that are crapping the bed night after night are capable of being the best team in the league. So yeah, what we’re saying is that we wouldn’t mind the annual March Swoon quite so much if it wasn’t always immediately following the annual “the Devils are really, really, really awesome” non-swoon.

– You know what else is making this year’s Swoon so insufferable? Chico. We realize he’s under orders from MSG to say only glowing things about the home team (or at least, we’re assuming he is, based on how the other MSG announcers act), but still. Aren’t there ways to do that without insulting the viewers’ intelligence so grievously? When the Devils got shut out by the worst team in the league in the game after they gave up five straight goals to the Flames, and Chico announced to us that he was shocked by the outcome, we finally reached our wits’ ends. That Oilers game was many things, but shocking was not one of them. We are seriously considering watching tomorrow’s Devils/Rangers game with the sound off.

– Hey, you know what’s good, though? We didn’t get Scott Niedermayer at the trade deadline.

– You know what’s bad, though? We did get Martin Skoula. Are we sure he’s not Niclas Havelid in a Martin Skoula outfit? Or, worse yet, Phil Housley?

– We know the Devils aren’t listening to us, because they don’t listen to anything this time of year other than the siren song of their vacation homes. But if they could hear us, we would like to say just this: “Shoot the fucking puck, you sad fucking fucks.” The are killing us with this refusal to shoot. If this was what they were planning to become, Lou should have just kept Gomez and Gionta. (Yeah, ouch.)

– But on the bright side, we hear that Lemaire is bringing back the Showdown at the Triple Z Ranch line! That’ll be fun for the one or two shifts they stay together.

– There is something that brings us constant joy during Devils games lately, though. It’s that Just For Men Touch of Gray commercial where the dude gets age discriminated against and sexually harassed during his job interview. Who wouldn’t want to work at that company? If only Just For Men Touch of Gray worked for women, we’d be applying there right this minute.

– We were out to lunch yesterday, so we want to wish Mags a super-happy day after her birthday today. Gefeliciteerd met je verjaardaag, Mags! (Only add some Dutch in there to make it say “day after your birthday” instead of just plain “birthday”.)

– Also, let’s all promise to be best friends forever, m’kay? Good luck in college, everyone!

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Our Newest Thoughts As Intrepid Reporters

We have recently, for a variety of reasons, become obsessed with the modern everyday food consumed by normal people in Scandinavia. One of the things that has astounded us is the robust frozen pizza industry in countries we assumed didn’t have any interest at all in foodstuffs that weren’t fermented fish with dill sauce. Thanks to some serendipitous research by Katebits, we’ve learned that Sweden really likes a fascinating product called Billys Pan Pizza, which boasts a rather shockingly broad assortment of flavors.

Now, One of our favorite things about doing cultural research of foreign countries on the interwebs is attempting to read websites in languages we don’t understand. So the other evening we were poring through the Billys website, and came across the description for the Billys Capricciosa:

Ett perfekt mellanmål innan hockeyträningen!

That’s Swedish for “Billys Capricciosa should be on every hockey player’s training table”, right?

With that in mind, Schnookie tried to read aloud a little corporate timeline on the website that was boasting when certain flavors and products were introduced. Like, Billys Original was introduced in 1993, and Billys Chicken Taco was introduced in 1997, or whatever. And then she got to something called “Billys People”. Which prompted Pookie to wail, “Billys People is people!!”

The point of all of this is that someday soon, when we get the media access that is due to every hockey blogger, we have a new question in our journalisty arsenal. We will lead our interviews with “Can you swim?”, and if the interviewee is Swedish, we will follow up with, “What’s your favorite Billys Pan Pizza?” Then we’ll nail him with the hard-hitting, “And did you know that Billys People is people?”

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