This is not the lame summer-boringness I had intended for our 100th post

Lindsay and I don’t do so well during the off-season. It’s not that our lives stop without hockey as much as it is that the ways in which we try to trick our minds into thinking that hockey is still there occasionally interferes with our daily lives, if not our sanity.

Which is the only explanation I can give as to why I paid to see The Love Guru in theatres twice last summer.

We’re keeping busy when we can, looking for jobs (and looking, and looking, and looking…), getting sunburned, watching the Tigers (Marian Hossa dug a deep, deep hole in my heart last season, and Placido Polanco is filling it with delicious free roast beef)…

But among these normal and relatively mentally healthy activities, we’ve also been lamenting off-season moves, giggling at prospects who don’t know English very well yet, speculating about whether Sidney Crosby has a teddy bear, and, even though it’s only been out for a day, already finding reasons to bitch about next season’s schedule.

And I secretly get excited every time I hear one of Ken Daniels’ Brighthouse cable commercials.

I know that the Red Wings have the shortest off-season in the NHL this year, and hockey-related things have been happening all over the place, but I feel like I’ve just spent the last year in a strange place where no one cares about hockey and no one probably ever will.

I suddenly feel sorry for all four legitimate Nashville fans, because that’s their reality, and I’m only imagining I’m there because I’ve gone delirious from the heat. And the fact that our landline is down at the moment, so I’m posting this from a Starbucks. Being on dial-up is one thing, but whose phone line dies if they’re not in a blizzard or about to be murdered?

And I still have no idea what the crap is going on with Jiri Hudler.

But I’m not even sure if Jiri Hudler knows what’s going on with Jiri Hudler.