What is this gif? I’ve been watching it for 20 mins and I’m crying.

HI GUYS! Remember me? I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet and go over half a season of hockey that I’ve mostly missed. How does this happen? My life is like space in Interstellar, where time barely passes, while hockey and this blog remain on Earth, getting 80 years older every day without me.

So, All-Star Game?

Is anyone watching this? I kinda sorta almost totally forgot about it until someone mentioned John  Tavares’ pants.

@JennMJones531 to the rescue.

That will get my attention, even from space.

Mixing space movie metaphors!! (Spends five hours looking at Matt Damon gifs.)

So, Crosby didn’t get invited. That’s old news. I wrote a mental blog post called “10 Things Sid Can Do Instead of the ASG”, which was quite funny.  You should read it sometime when you develop mind-reading powers.  Or tomorrow, if I get around to posting it.

The newer news is Ovi and Toews are hurt/sick and also suspended. The NHL sure knows how to cry when the whole class doesn’t come to their party.

Truth hurts, ASG.

Alas, with no drunken draft, most of the fun is gone from the weekend anyway. The NHL has realized this too late and made some replacement efforts to attract our attention:

1) Made John Tavares captain. He probably suggested this Footloose-inspired sobriety nonsense, for fear a real charitable organization might think Ovi was actually poor and needed a new car. The paperwork on that tax headache!  But it does mean more camera time for Captain T and the Pleated Pants.

Does this data come in a pie chart?

2) Dierks Bentley. HOLLER. I love country music, and Dierks is a big Preds fan, and everybody likes tight jeans. He’ll be one of the celeb coaches at the game.

We would get drunk on this plane.

3) All the Foxy Fridays. Damn if they didn’t replace Toews with James Neal. The NHL knew I wasn’t paying attention and just waved a red ginger flag in my face.

endsmile

Add that to Pekka Rinne, Shea Weber and all-time FF fave, Roman Josi, and the home team is, um, well represented.  Other Foxy Fridays on the roster: Jamie Benn, Matt Duchene, Patrick Kane, Tyler Seguin, Jonathan Quick, Patrice Bergeron, Ryan O’Reilly, Ben Bishop, Claude Giroux, holy crap are we there yet?, Evgeni Malkin, the aforementioned John Tavares, CPA, His Disney Highness Kris Letang, Ryan McDonaugh and Braden Holtby.

Answer: Making Pants hate herself.

Note: Stamkos, #TeamHall and Nicky Backstrom have never been Foxy Fridays. This blog is a sham. Shut it down.

What kind of irresponsible journalism is this?!

4) 3-on-3 Format. I won’t pretend to have an opinion on this, as I’ve watched approximately one OT period all season, but it sounds exciting. Top players + more open ice = more goals, right? But hasn’t the All-Star Game always ended in some Hobbit score of twelveses to eleventy anyway? Maybe the “last place in the draft” prize can be repurposed to the only player who doesn’t score a hat trick on Sunday.

Ovi wasn’t last, but someone did give him a car to donate to charity.

5) The John Scott story. Voted into the ASG by fans, then traded and assigned to the AHL, the saga of whether or not John Scott would appear in the ASG has been ongoing news. Yesterday, Scott published this first person account in The Player’s Tribune. In it, he explains how someone from the NHL encouraged him, even now, not to attend this weekend’s events.

SCREW YOU, NHL. Wrong, bad, stupid, and also, WHY? John Scott may be the only player who actually cares about this game, and you think he should stay home? Do you think the fans who voted him in should not watch? Oh no, you want them. You NEED them.

She’ll be proud.

Read the Player’s Tribune story. It will make you want to buy a John Scott jersey and stand up in your living room when he takes the ice on Sunday. I hope every player shows up wearing his name. You may not like Scott’s brand of hockey, but it is part of hockey. Scott may not be an elite player, but he is a player. Was a player? Will be an NHL player again? Who knows. But if you love the game, you have to love it’s scars.

So, see you guys tomorrow night on the Twitters to techno-judge the real skills at Skills Competition: hair, beard, sass? Our trifecta of All-Star Weekend talents.

So, while I wait for my fat pants to finish in the dryer, here is a list of five hockey-related things we are thankful for, because they just keep giving.

Toews is fun now. Take a moment to remember the Jonathan Toews you met years ago.

I still call my mom for recipes too.

And Jonathan Toews of today.

Cowabunga, dude.

Was it all that exposure to Blackhawks TV that changed him? Time spent with Kaner?Or is it just winning that opened his three-times-too-serious sized heart? It might have been his little dog, too.

The Sidstache. Be honest, you kind of like it! Maybe I am speaking for myself, but it’s not that bad this Movember. It’s still a mustache, and I cannot imagine a world in which I’d support mustaches for no charitable reason, but at least it looks mostly like a real mustache. And hey, it gets a whole month to grow. I am just preparing myself for what Sid will look like a month into the playoffs this season. When the choices are mustache or golf shoes, this mustache is looking pretty sweet.

At least you can tell it’s supposed to be a mustache.

Cabbie Presents… exactly what You were thinking. Cabbie is our spirit animal in the mainstream (okay, Canadian) media world. He takes what we are thinking, saying and even secretly wishing for, and makes it for everyone.  The Sid Selfie? Tavares Man Bun? Endless gems – and exactly the videos we’d make if it were safe for us to be within selfie range.

Please let this escalate into choreographed dancing.

Inside jokes. There are so many hockey references that make me laugh, a few have to do with in-game moments. From Intern Jeff Skinner to thinking “Girls love” every time Malkin is a dork, a lot of our random chatter keeps the game close to our hearts. Maybe Toews is doing a squat in Spanx right now (he would, on Thanksgiving, that overachiever). If Tavares is celebrating American Thanksgiving, I guarantee his fat pants are khakis! And no matter how much you eat, rest assured that Steven Stamkos is definitely thinking, “Hey girl.”

At his induction to the Intern Hall of Fame

YOU. We are thankful for everyone who reads WUYS, and especially the many of you who interact with us and each other both here and on social media. You guys are the funny, smart backbone of this place! You send us the best ideas and carry on inside jokes we would otherwise only have with ourselves. Thanks to all of you this blog is still skating along five (5!) years later.

Okay, a hug from us isn’t this good.

Your turn! Leave your hockey-related gratitude in the comments below. It’ll give us ideas for future posts, and maybe open our eyes to a few things we’ve missed in the first quarter of this season.

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! And to all our Canadian friends, there is plenty for you too.

Me, circa 7PM tonight.