It has been a frightful 48 hours, dear reader, as not-so-thinly veiled threats from the Sports Played On Ice division of the Illuminati have been flooding in via Twitter. Never have 140 so grotesquely abbreviated and poorly punctuated characters of the Queen’s language chilled me to bone as quickly as these:

@illassassin: JSYK ur in over head. u know 2 much. we have ppl in ur ranks. shut dwn ur blog b4 u r dead TIA, BTW njoy coffee #cyanide

Apparently my last post struck a chord that rang far too long, and eerily true, echoing its way through the cavernous halls and deep into the sacred chambers of hockey’s most powerfully wristed lever pullers. Fortunately, I caught on to the scheme before I took that fate altering sip of macchiato.

So it is with great courage, faithful followers, that I am this evening blogging from a secret bunker located deep under Prime Hockey headquarters on an old Tandy TRS-80 that I have hooked up to a car battery. Had I realized that this relic of the cold war only had a 300 baud modem, I would not have wasted 2 hours loading Firefox into memory from seventy-six 5.5 inch floppy disks.

Photo by hanan_cohen / CC BY-SA 2.0

In the store room, I have found a massive supply of food. Unfortunately, variety is scarce. All that has survived are 12 fifty-pound bags of freeze dried french fries, 13 cases of canned gravy, and 19 ten-pound blocks of artificial cheese. I fear I may starve, as there is no possible way to combine these ingredients in a way that will result in anything edible.

It is cold down here, but there is ample firewood. Although it pains me to burn my much prized collection of autographed hockey sticks, no tears have been shed, as it will be several days before I run out of those signed by first-round draft picks that never played in an NHL game. The crackle and odor of smoldering fiberglass reminds me of Thanksgiving dinner at my Mother-in-Law’s house, and is helping to suppress my appetite.

Photo by sundazed / CC BY-SA 2.0

I am keeping up my spirits in the form of an old bubble hockey game that was placed in storage down here after the protective dome was shattered. This career ending incident occurred at last year’s office Christmas party when my former secretary had one too many egg-nogs and smashed it with a Guitar Hero controller. Against all conceivable odds, I lost a best-of-seven series to Team Red, even though nobody was operating the handles and the goalie is missing half of his glove in addition to his head.

Photo by sfllaw / CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s news is trickling in slowly over my near useless internet connection, but data is flowing into our backup wire service without a hiccup. Here is one that I must address:

GIGUERE UNHAPPY… STOP… I’D RATHER RETIRE THAN BE A BACKUP GOALIE… STOP… BEING RICH MAKES ME BETTER THAN NE1… STOP… PLAY ME OR I QUIT… STOP…

Upon reading this, I did not hesitate to reply with a wire of my own:

WHINING… STOP…

And as for the anonymous tweeters that are attempting to destroy my resolve for seeking the truth, with their shallow threats, hurled blindly from the safety of their ivory towers; I have a message for you cowards!

@primehockey: i wuz j/k, plz dont kill me, i alrdy paid 4 nhl center ice

Troubling news today, dear reader, as word has fallen upon my ears of the sudden resignation of Buzz Hargrove as NHLPA ombudsman. It is tragic, to say the least, that such disgrace should befall a man, who just this past July, celebrated the 40th anniversary of one of the most historic moments in human history. For those readers who’s birth was streamed live on Facebook, or who received an iPhone for their 5th birthday, Buzz piloted the first manned mission to the moon, and was the second human being ever to set foot on the aforementioned ball of cheese.

Although Hargrove served only a short term as ombudsman, his impact was enormous. I have to take my source’s word for it, however, because I have no idea on God’s green earth what an ombudsman is. According to Wikipedia, which has made the right side of my brain entirely expendable, an ombudsman “is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing the broad scope of constituent interests.”

Yes, the pieces are beginning to fall nicely into place for me now. As I am privy to the classified minutes of three secret closed door meetings that have taken place over the past 18 months, two of which were called to order by none other than Gary Bettman himself, I believe that there will never be a better time to leak the key details.

For those of you in doubt of my abilities to harvest such privileged information, here is a picture taken by my confidential informant using a pin-hole spy camera which was smuggled into one of these secret meetings inside a box of sugar pucks.

Photo by phloyd / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There is now no doubt in my mind, that ombudsman Buzz, was an inside man. A national hero and lover of all things extra-terrestrial, that Bettman personally recruited and meticulously groomed to pilot one final mission into the unknown. That mission, to push onto the unsuspecting NHLPA constituency, his plan to put an NHL expansion franchise on the moon.

Photo by arkku / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We all know of at least one other individual who was very likely to have also come across this restricted information. I am of course talking about former head of the NHLPA, Paul Kelly. Who, as we all know, was unceremoniously forced out of his job after being caught hacking into the NHLPA mainframe computer to play an advanced copy of NHL 2k11. What is only now being exposed, however, is that while trying to locate and import an outdated roster with Jeremy Roenick on it, he stumbled across the blueprints for Moon Garden Alpha.

Photo by blogjim

So as you can see, dear reader, all is not always as it first appears.  Just as the moon orbits the earth, everything has come full circle.  Now that light has been shed on the dark dealings of these past months, and if there still good in this world, Paul Kelly will be reinstated as the head of the NHLPA. After all, he was only protecting the interests of his constituents! If there is one inalienable right that should never be denied a professional hockey player, it is to never suffer the indignity of playing hockey outside of North America, and especially not the moon, and never, ever, ever, Europe.

Dear readers, there have been a flurry of rumors over the past 48 hours that have dredged up many a painful memory for me personally, and for which countless thousands of other adoring NHL fans have spent untold millions on psychiatric care to bury deep in their skulls. Not unlike on a Discovery Channel marathon on a rainy Sunday afternoon, rumors surrounding the return of everyone’s favorite NHL dinosaurs are once again walking the fertile plains of our overactive imaginations.

Yes, my friends, they are back. Jagr… Foppa… Dallman?

Former Ranger’s coach and current Oilers assistant coach Tom Renny is all over the Jagr situation:

“Jags and I text back and forth. I talked to him about six weeks ago,” Renney said. “He’s on our radar. He has NHL years ahead of him. No question.”

Actually, I do have a question sir! Where in Alberta are you going to find a large harem of six foot tall Russian supermodels to follow “Jags” around the West Edmonton Mall and stand in line for him at the food court? Because that, my friend, will be in line one, paragraph one of the contract.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

As Foppa watch 2009/10 is now coming to a nice rolling boil on the back burner, it is high time to erase the delusions, and bring some important evidence to light. It has come into my possession through a complicated series of back channels and informants deep inside the Swedish mafioso, medical information so damning, so gruesome… well lets just say, don’t pick Forsberg for your keeper league.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

And that brings us to Kevin Dallman, who is still tearing up the KHL this season after setting the league record for most points by a defenseman just a few months ago. This tantalizing development is sure to have broad implications to the rumor mill as swine flu continues to decimate lineups from one side of the continent to the other.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Sleep tight, you murderous savages. The dinosaurs are on the hunt.

Its Plague!

Who could have predicted the hatred that swine have for hockey?  Certainly not I, gentle reader.  Nor the team doctors of many an NHL franchise who now find themselves in the cloven, hoofy grasp of H1N1.  So put away your crystal balls, back into their cool purple velvet baggies with the drawstring, because it is already upon us!

And do not consult your periodic table of the elements my friends, I have already checked for you, and you will find no entry for H1N1.  If you want to know the molecular weight of this heinous disease, you are utterly, and completely, SOL.

The most recent victim, David Krejci of the Boston Bruins, has been sidelined indefinitely after contracting the infamous virus.  Indefinitely!  Length of time, indeterminable!  David could not be reached for comment as he, at the time, was busy using his uncanny shiftiness to keep the correct end of his body over the toilet.

Boston’s GM Peter Chiarelli announced in a press conference today, that he has agreed to comply with CDC recommendations and keep David isolated from the rest of the team until he is symptom and fever free for at least 24 hours.  Mr. Chiarelli, already dealing with the loss of his franchise center to a broken foot, has not only agreed to comply with the government’s standards, but is taking it a step further.  In order to protect the remainder of his lineup from disease, all players on the Boston NHL and AHL clubs will be given a more potent, and certainly more controversial H1N1 vaccination directly to the brain.

As you can see from the picture below, long time TD Garden custodian and second string peanut vendor Rari Huisalius, agreed to take part in the one person clinical trials.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

The courage in that man’s eyes says it all for me. If not courage, then it might also have something to do with being promised a pair of tickets in the “all you can eat” section of the Garden the next time the Panthers are in town.

Can Rari’s sacrifice save us from several weeks of scrub AHLers getting power play time? Nobody can really know for sure. But I, for one, am hopeful.

There are still leaves clinging to the trees, the Thanksgiving turkeys are eating crushed corn and gobbling happily in their cells on the Green Mile, and come too early this holiday season is the trade Vinny talk.

Not many months ago, Lecavalier’s name was the centerpiece of all but the most boring trade deadline masterstrokes in the minds of every swivel chair GM who dare move quality assets on their lunch break to acquire such an athlete.  The new line combinations flying from their fingertips as their blood shot eyes danced with excitement at the thought of Vinny pulling on the home jersey and making them fall in love with the team all over again.

It would not come to pass, however, and we all felt the pain of watching a marquee talent battle it out for almost worst place in the league.  That is, until we witnessed the tears of Hossa, and stopped feeling sorry for ourselves.

And now, Vinny is working his way back into our thoughts with a vengeance!  Apparently averaging almost a point per game on an extremely bad team is not good enough for rookie head coach Tocchet, and Vinny is being called out in the media.  As if this isn’t enough to make the multi-gazillionaire playboy devour an entire beluga caviar and saffron pizza, he has also been demoted to the 3rd line.  This has whipped the rumor mill into a frenzy, and VL is once again being penciled into everyone’s first line before the garbage man has had time to pick up that pile of orange goo sitting at your curb that used to be a pumpkin.

There is more than one victim here, however, and lets not let him go unnoticed.  I am of course referring to long time line mate, friend, and confidant of Lecavalier’s, Martin St. Louis.  Once you drink champagne from the Stanley Cup in the locker room, a bond is forged that can never be broken.  Not by earth, wind, fire, or even an ex power forward who likes to gamble and don nice suits.

Coach Tocchet, for shame!

Dry your eyes, Marty. Come Vancouver, you shall be re-united.

Photo from fOTOGLIF