Actor Rainn Wilson wanted tickets to Game 4 of the Western Conference Final between the Los Angeles Kings and the Phoenix Coyotes, so the wacky Kings Twitter team — the same team who helped build Stanley Cup sandcastles and just trolled Marlon Wayans (Marlon Wayans!) for liking basketball more than hockey — responded the only way they knew how: by referencing the first episode of ‘The Office’.

The exchange, by way of Puck Daddy:

I don’t blame them for referencing that instead of anything that’s happened since Jim and Pam got married (what’re they supposed to do, off him tickets inside of a boring storyline about who wants to run Dunder-Mifflin?), but if I was Wilson I’d trick them into phasing all their tweets in the form of meatballs.

Here’s a pic of Luc Robitaille presenting Dwight with his tickets, or one of the Blues Brothers getting a gift from Jason Bateman, I can’t really tell because they Instagram’d it and they might as well have been standing in a 1970s sandstorm:

I want an Ice King shirt.

The Coyotes went on to defeat the Kings in Rainn’s first hockey game, so it could be his last. Or maybe they’ll just replace him with a less funny celebrity, make the team as unreliable as possible and pay John Krasinski a million dollars a game to stand behind the penalty box making faces.

My favorite part of NMA World Edition’s recap of the rising violence in the NHL Playoffs should be players drowning each other, morphing into literal devils and damage-dealing penguins (!) or attacking one another with rocket shoes, but it isn’t — it’s the fact that I guess Taiwanese animation doesn’t have a pre-rendered hockey helmet in their clip art so they just gave everybody motorcycle helmets. That’s amazing.

So yeah, here’s the blood and guts report from our favorite, barely-talented journalistic savants. Come for the fans high-fiving each other for getting hit with body parts, stay for the child-on-child violence.

[h/t to Skooch Banacheck]

I was called a sucky pussy yesterday for believing that hockey fights are only a part of the game when hockey has actually been played, so I wanted to share footage of a completely justified bloody brawl. During the second period of Tuesday night’s game between the Dallas Stars and Phoenix Coyotes, Coyotes captain Shane Doan gave Stars forward Jamie Benn a suckerpunch elbow to the jaw. As the adorably commentary noted, it was “right on the button” and “all heck” proceeded to break loose.

A rundown of penalties, courtesy of Puck Daddy:

Doan was given a fighting major for his bout with Brenden Morrow (who also received five minutes), as well as a two-minute elbowing minor for the hit on Benn.

The other penalties for the Coyotes: Raffi Torres with roughing and charging minors and a 10-minute misconduct; and Rusty Klesla with a roughing minor and a 10-minute misconduct.

The other penalties for the Stars: Steve Ott with roughing and unsportsmanlike conduct minors, and a 10-minute misconduct; and Trevor Daley with a roughing minor and a 10-minute misconduct.

As for Doan, he’s in trouble when the NHL gets a gander at this thing.

I’m starting to learn that almost anything you can get in trouble for in the NHL is somebody’s idea of how the game should be played. I guess that works for every sport. Personally I’d take off my skate and try to stab a guy if he nonchalantly skated by and blatantly tried to injure me with an elbow to the face, and I wouldn’t be upset if my team joined in.

Paul Bissonnette of the Phoenix Coyotes jumped on Twitter to post pictures from the team’s Halloween party, and I really do wish I could say “Paul Bissonnette as Hacksaw Jim Duggan” was the news to share, even if he thinks Hacksaw said “OOOH” instead of the proper “HOOO”. No, what you see above is winger Raffi Torres as “Jay-Z”, complete with brown skin, and his wife, who I guess thinks a ton of self-tanner and a sparkly dress constitutes Beyonce.

Bissonnette was quick to defend his teammate thinking this was a good idea:

“As far as everyone trying to call ‘Racism’ because Raffi dressed up like Jay-Z can simmer down. He’s a huge Jay-Z fan.”

And that leads us to the next few sentences, which you (and I’m talking to Raffi Torres directly, here) should read carefully and commit to memory:

I get it. You aren’t a racist. You like black people. You wanted to be a black guy you like for Halloween, and that guy has brown skin, so you made your skin brown. When someone like you dons an “innocent blackface”, much like Spanky did that time he put shoe polish on his face to escape the house dressed as Buckwheat, it causes rambling, point-and-counterpoint discussion about the history of prejudice and the widespread ignorance of entitlement on every sports blog and news show known to man. Here’s the quick version … it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re trying to be racist. Wearing blackface, especially in 2011, especially when you’re a sports celebrity and especially when people are taking pictures of you to put on the Internet, makes you the dumbest motherf**ker alive.

You’re stupid. You’re a dumb, stupid idiot. Don’t do this. Just don’t. That’s the end of the discussion. It’s a bad idea, regardless of what percentage non-white you happen to be or how many black people you talk to on Facebook. Your thought process should be “I should dress up as Jay-Z for Halloween … haha too bad I’m not a black guy” and then you dress up as Peanut Butter Jelly Time or the Black Swan or whateveer.

“Jay-Z” isn’t even a good costume for a black guy, it’s just “black guy in Yankees hat and sunglasses”. Jay’s wearing a Biggie Smalls costume anyway.

It’s official: the Atlanta Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg.

True North Sports and Entertainment, the Canadian group that has been negotiating to buy the team since mid-May, made formal announcement of the move at news conference in Winnipeg at 12:20 p.m.

“Sometimes, we simply don’t have a choice,” [Commissioner Gary Bettman] said.

The Thrashers owners, Atlanta Spirit, negotiated the sale of the Thrashers to True North since mid-May. The Thrashers’ owners have said in court documents that the team has lost $130 million since 2005.

Sh**, and I just learned what a “Thrasher” was. Fun fact: Atlanta is the only U.S. city to lose a sports franchise to Canada, and they’ve done it twice. The first time was when the Flames left for Calgary in 1980. The Thrashers have been in Atlanta since the league expanded in 1999, and spent most of their time adding black players to the team to try and and get hockey over in urban Georgia. Steven Godfrey of SB Nation has a great retrospective on that little storyline coming to an end, and hopefully they’ll continue to put together the team with a racial bias and make their mascot a big affable flag-waving white guy.

No word yet on whether or not the move will rebrand the team the “Jets,” the franchise that left Winnipeg for Phoenix to become the Coyotes in 1996, but anything else would seem anticlimactic. Think of Cleveland getting their football team back and calling them the “RiverDogs” instead of the Browns.

[via AJC]

On Tuesday’s game against the Coyotes, Anaheim Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf took a shot to the face worse than Shyla Stylez in half her films. Phoenix’s Shane Doan was aiming for the goal but instead found Getzlaf right above the eye after the shot was deflected, giving him a nice gash above the eye which made him fall to the ice in pain and start bleeding almost immediately.

Getzlaf is recovering though, with about “12 to 15″ stitches for the wound. He also has “multiple sinus fractures,” which totally sounds fine. Getzlaf will miss at least tonight’s game against the Flyers and Sunday’s game against the Blackhawks. Read this appetizing quote from Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle:

“There’s quite a gash there,” Carlyle said. “He had bleeding into his nasal cavity … and he felt nauseous at times because of the blood draining into his stomach.”

Delicious. And to think, all of this could have been stopped with a visor. Or a very stylish hat.

Via Bob’s Blitz.

The most marketable face of pro hockey’s most unstable franchise is gone. Wayne Gretzky, who happens to be one of the greatest players to ever play the game, has quit as head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes.

“This was a difficult decision that I’ve thought long and hard about,” Gretzky said in a statement Thursday on his Web site. “We all hoped there would be a resolution earlier this month to the Coyotes ownership situation, but the decision is taking longer than expected.

“Since both remaining bidders have made it clear that I don’t fit into their future plans, I approached general manager Don Maloney and suggested he begin looking for someone to replace me as coach. Don has worked hard and explored many options. I think he has made an excellent choice, and so now it’s time for me to step aside.”

Gretzky’s replacement seems to be in hand, though no announcement has been made. And there’s a good chance that this could be it for the end of the Coyotes in Arizona, and the league-wide ramifications of the sale could be zzzzzzzzz…

You’re forgiven if you haven’t been following the saga of the sale of the Phoenix Coyotes. It’s hockey, it’s the offseason, and it’s Arizona. Even the people in Arizona don’t care about hockey in Arizona, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. But things are approaching a fever pitch, if you will, and it seems appropriate to provide an update on the chicanery-laden proceedings:

• The NHL is pretty hardcore about keeping the team in Arizona, perhaps more for the regional presence in the league than the human turnout for actual games. The Coyotes rank 28th out of 30 teams in home attendance, according to ESPN.
• The Coyotes lost $54 million last season, and the NHL confirmed that they are involved with the day-to-day operation of the team, assuming control of certain team assets after loaning the club an undisclosed amount of cash. And this happened about a month after commissioner Gary Bettman quipped about the team “not [being] on life support.”
• Majority owner Jerry Moyes first bought into the team in 2001. The team has not turned a profit since his arrival, and is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Protection is important, yo.
• Moyes’ attempt to sell the team to Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie–who wanted to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario–was unanimously blocked by NHL ownership. That ruling has gone to court.
• Jerry Reinsdorf, who owns both the Chicago Bulls and Chcago White Sox, made a bid for the team valued around $148 million, which has since been retracted. Reinsdorf wanted assurances that he could move the team if he couldn’t make money
• In what seems like a last-ditch effort to keep the team in Arizona, the NHL announced that it would make its own bid to buy the team. The value of that proposed bid has not been disclosed.
• Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky is totally gay.

Okay, I made that last one up. But the chaos in keeping the coolest game on earth in one of the hottest, most expensive, most passive hockey audiences in America is building to a fine crescendo. If Gary Bettman launched the team into space and announced that they’d play the 2009-2010 season on Mars, I wouldn’t be surprised. The Martian market is just begging for a pro team, but there’s no way they’d put up a subsidy for a new arena. Aliens aren’t that stupid.