Also, the entire team has the flu.

Tonight there's a game against Boston. I'm not sure I have much to say about it, except to note that the team needs the points (I think we're 11th place out of 15 in the conference right now. I think, if I have any grasp on the sport at all, that we need to aim for at least 8th. Right? I'm not hallucinating that, am I?) and to spend another ten pages bitching about how much I hate Versus.

Which I should really stop. Granted, there's a lot to bitch about. There's no denying that. Especially in these trying times, where, if I have to watch my team lose consistently, I want everybody on the channel I'm watching it on, from the regional producers down to the lowliest interns to at least pretend to be ragingly unfair, completely biased homers. It just makes it easier when you feel like the color guy might be hurting right along with you.

But I feel like I've been too hard on Versus in the past. At least they're trying. At least they're a nationally broadcast cable network in the States airing hockey games across the country on a regular basis. Sure, they're not perfect. Sure, their commentators don't always kiss the ground that Ken Holland walks on like I think they should. Sure, Brian Engblom's hair looks like he scalped MacGyver and then decided to wear his mullet as a trophy headpiece but MacGyver's head was a little smaller than his so the mullet didn't quite fit right so he had to put it on little mullet stilts on his head so it would stay there*.

(*MacGyver's mullet wouldn't stay there. MacGyver's mullet would steal three paperclips and Kieth Jone's pen and use them to escape.)

But at least they're not NBC, who forbids teams from holding playoff viewing parties, makes us spend every intermission hoping Mike Milbury will finally just kick Pierre MaGuire's ass but he never does, and has a disconcerting anti-Swede bias, which I wouldn't even mind if my team didn't have more Swedes than Ikea had chairs, but it does, so I do mind, quite a bit.


I'm sorry, I'm sitting here rationalizing the legitimacy of the existence of Versus, where I should be doing my job - which is making myself feel better about a potential loss tonight by making fun of the Boston Bruins.

Sadly, all I have to give you is this video of some bears playing hockey:



I don't remember if we'd already posted this. Aside from the obvious ethical PETA/ASPCA questions I have... I just want to know how much fish paste and tranquilizer you have to use to teach bears to skate.

Probably more fish paste than it took to get Zdeno Chara to strip naked in front of a camera. (Don't worry, it's... tastefully... posed...) The good news about that picture is that if it struck you blind, you don't have to see Brian Engblom's hair at all tonight. Awesome!