Hello everyone and happy holidays to all! Of course we have to start this week's column off with the account of the fighting Santas at last week's Islander game. For those of you who may have been too busy Christmas shopping here's what happened. The Islanders invited all fans to come to the Isles/Flyers game dressed in full Santa regalia, and those who did, were given free attendance. On top of that, between periods, all the Santas were invited down to the ice for a sort of "parading of the colors" if you will. Well, before you can say "someone call an ambulance, Yashin's arm is about to fall off" some 1,000 or so Santas are now milling about on the Coliseum ice between the 1st and 2nd periods. Then amidst all this clutter two of these St. Nicks decide to rip off their red suits revealing, get this, Ranger jerseys underneath! Guess we can call these guys St. Nick Fotius, eh? Anyway, these true Islander fans disguised as Santas decide that these Ranger fans aren't going to get away with this blasphemy so what do you know? An all out brawl ensues! And let me tell you. From the looks of things, it wasn't pretty! Some "very nice" Christmas goonage if I do say so myself. Beards flying everywhere, red fur being ripped out, shiny black boots depositing themselves in people's jingle balls, you get the picture. Think "Road House" meets "Miracle on 34th Street". So about 10 minutes later, after calling in the Reindeer police, they've got order restored and now they start dishing out the penalties… Let's see, if each Santa gets five for fighting plus a 10-minute misconduct, that would come out to 15-minutes per guy in a red suit. Now let's throw a match game misconduct on top of that since they caused such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash... So that's the original 15 plus the additional 20 for the match penalty and we're talking 35 minutes per Santa. Multiply that by the 1,000 guys on the ice and we're talking a cumulative 35,000 minutes (over 555 hours) in the Sin Bin for Saint Nick! So unless somebody scores a quick goal on the ensuing power play, we can't expect to see Santa back on the ice until February at the earliest. Gee, I hope he has time to make all those Christmas toy returns when he gets out… And since we're currently in the post-Christmas, pre-New Year's demilitarized zone on the calendar, let's close this column out with a couple of holiday themed Top 10's.
Top 10 Ways To Tell It's Christmas Time In The NHL
See a holiday Top Ten in which the Anaheim Mighty Ducks did not change their name! Although the Mighty Elves would definitely work, especially with Will Ferrell skating center between Fedorov and Sykora… Oh well, on to the other side of the DMZ…
Top 10 Ways To Tell It's New Year's Day In The NHL Hope you all had a happy Christmas and/or Hannukah and everybody have a happy and safe New Years! 'til next week…
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