I don’t know what the opposite of a Bucket List is, but “have an arena full of people roar with approval when I get blasted in the face with a hockey puck” is on mine.

That’s what happened during the third period of Tuesday night’s Ducks/Wild game at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. In this clip (courtesy of Sportress Of Blogitude’s Weed Against Speed, the only Minnesota Wild fan on the entire Internet), Anaheim defenseman Cam Fowler dumps the puck back into the offensive zone, remembering that “dumps” means “hits it as hard as humanly f**king possible” and “the offensive zone” is “referee Dennis LaRue’s shoulder and head area”. The ref goes down like a ton of bricks and the crowd loves it, assumedly because the Wild had gotten a few bad calls early in the game.

LaRue got up and finished the game (like a boss), which leaves us with a question: What is most socially uncomfortable?

1. An Xcel Energy Center full of people thinking it’s awesome that you’ve suffered physical injury because they don’t like the job you’re doing.
2. Me thinking this is hilarious, but being indignant enough to pretend I wouldn’t have cheered too.
3. Sharing this on the Internet so you’ll do numbers 1 or 2.

[video via MrNHLFanatic]

Take a look at Brent Burns, NHL defenseman for the San Jose Sharks, pictured right. Does he look like the kind of guy who makes a lot of strong personal decisions? He got his first tattoo when he was 11, and this summer he got a huge tattoo on his back of his pets with the word “Wild” in green. You know, because he played for the Minnesota Wild. Which he no longer does.

Anyway, the latest masterpiece (by way of Twitter and our friends at Puck Daddy, and probably everybody else in the world with eyeballs and a sense of propriety) is Brent’s second giant, colorful dragon, only this one features the beast being battled by Harry Potter. If you click the image it’ll take you to the bigger, full version. Beware of body hair. That’s Harry in the upper left, in case you couldn’t make it out. Why Harry Potter, you ask?

A lot of questions for HP tattoo! Always loved books! There ya go #hogwartslooksfun I don’t know why itsupsidedwn

He posted it to his Twitter upside down, in case you need that part deciphered.

As someone who has a children’s book character tattooed on their person (I have Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web on my right arm) I can only make so much fun of him for this, so I’ll make fun of him for literally everything else ever, including being rich enough to do this and have it be news. But yeah, how many dragons does one body need? One more and he’s going to look like a kiosk at the mall.

Ladies and gentlemen, pictured above is Paul Devorski, and he is now my favorite referee ever. As a ref, he generally lives his life and plies his trade working in the NHL referee far from spotlight – hey, they can’t all be Ed Hochulis – save for the inebriated, belligerent fan or two who will mock and ridicule him at ever turn any time he makes a call which goes against their team. Such an event allegedly occurred last night in Ohio during the Columbus Blue Jackets-Minnesota Wild tilt. A group of fans in Section 109 of Nationwide Arena, upset over a perceived blown call, began letting Devorski have it. What they claim they received in response was a delightful little serving of snarky comeuppance.

Roughly 15 fans seated in or around the area sent emails or Twitter messages to The Dispatch shortly after the incident. One of them, Ritter Hoy, who was seated in the middle of the fifth row up from the glass, agreed to be interviewed by The Dispatch.

“Two guys in front of us started giving the refs (grief) after they clearly missed a call,” Hoy said. “Happens at every game, right?

“Well, the No. 10 official put his fingers up and rubbed his eyes and made a crying face, like ‘what are you going to do, cry?’ They started giving him more (grief) and he put his middle finger up to his chin and acted like he was scratching his face. It was very, very blatant. The whole section saw it and went crazy.”

[...]

“I have to say the guys who were two rows in front of us were kind of provoking him,” Hoy said. “They were pretty much provoking him. But he has to be used to that kind of stuff, right? He can’t go there, can he? – The Columbus Dispatch (via Puck Daddy)

Oh, go there he did, Mr. Hoy. And God bless him for it. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time when a heckler tries to crack wise during a comedy show. Be prepared for a snarky comeback. Except for at Dane Cook shows. No one showing up for one of those abominations is smart enough to crack wise about anything, let alone Dane Cook coming up with anything snarky to say.

Big ups to Terry for sending in this online ad of an upcoming Chicago Blackhawks-Minnesota Wild game, inspired by the new film, Where The Wild Things Are. My favorite part is when the guy in the suit was beaten into oppression by whoever that guy was. Is he a real Blackhawk? Is he in the movie? I never actually read the book, so I don’t know these things. Maybe his picture is someplace on the Blackhawks site. Maybe.

The video’s after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

My grandfather always used to say that there are two things that illustrate how we as human beings are filled with an insatiable bloodlust and will gleefully relish witnessing displays of violence and brutality.

And those two things are hockey fights and even more so, snuff films.

Sure, that was right before grandpa was sent away to a nice farm upstate where he could run and play – at least that’s what my parents told me – but his statement is at least partially accurate: people love watching hockey fights. Even the casual fan will pay attention to hockey if you tell them two guys are punching each other in the head..

And the above brawl between renowned puck pugilist (and mustache aficionado) George Parros of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and 6’8″ behemoth John Scott of the Minnesota Wild certainly brings home Gramp’s point. Given Parros’ experience (Parros is credited with 83 regular season fights since the 2005 season on hockeyfights.com, Scott, 5), this shouldn’t have been much of a battle, but Scott landed some terrific shots and put Parros on the ice. In fact, I would call it an old-fashioned, knock-down, butt-whooping.

And it worked. The brawl, as it often does in these situations, lit the proverbial match under the Wild, who were down 3-0 to the Ducks at the time, but rallied to win 4-3 in overtime. And people say there is no place for fighting in hockey. When I do come into contact with this sort of person, I say to them “bully.” And then I beat them viciously over the head with a hockey stick. So I guess when I do say “bully” to these soon-to-be victims of ultraviolence, it means a couple of different things.

Being an election year, your teevee has probably already started spewing forth patronizing political ads depicting you the voter as a singleminded fuckwit more interested in symbolic bullshit than actual issues. Which is usually true, so they work their cynicism to great effect. That is, of course, when they're not hilariously awful.

One of the more written about senate races around the country is in Minnesota where comedian-cum-blowhard Al Franken is pitted against incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. Coleman would like to remind voters, who he presumes are gruff bowling alley patrons who shout people down and pelt them with hockey pucks when they deviate from their angry chants, that he was instrumental in getting an NHL franchise back in the state. So remember this November: VOTE FOR HOCKEY OR GET PELTED WITH PUCKS!

[Puck Daddy]