Hey, remember hockey?

The NHL eliminated 16 more days from the regular-season schedule Monday, and if a deal with the players’ association isn’t reached soon the whole season could be lost.

The league wiped out all games through Dec. 30 in its latest round of cancellations. (via BostonHerald.com)

That’s … basically the saddest thing, and no amount of me editorializing on it can make it better. I’m not Barry Melrose over here, the best I can muster is, “enghhhhh give me hockey back you stupid assholes.” It’s looking more and more like the 2012-13 NHL season won’t exist, so I might as well get comfortable reporting about the Swedish Winter Classic, wherein somebody made international hockey better by adding a bunch of fire to it.

Via Greg at Puck Father:

This year marked the 100th birthday for [Swedish Elitserien hockey team] Brynäs [IF], and the franchise celebrated the moment with Canadiens-esque hyperbolic grandeur: An outdoor game in front of 15,000 fans at Glaveboken Arena vs. Timrå IK, in minus-12 degrees weather — so cold that the players’ water bottles kept freezing during the match.

To deal with the cold, they played some techno music and LIT EVERYTHING ON FIRE.

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If you can’t figure out what’s supposed to be happening in that picture, let me help you out. The guy who looks like he’s pooping on goal is Alexander Wennberg of Djurgarden, a team in the second-tier Swedish league HockeyAllsvenskan. Yes, I know I already wrote about Swedish people doing weird shit today (and I feel like I’m writing about ‘Skyrim’), but bear with me.

Opposing goaltender Erik Hanses lost control of the puck when Wennberg crashed the net, somehow losing it in dude’s pants. Wennberg continues his ass-first descent into goal, the puck falls out of his pants with a plopping motion (we’ve all been there) and Hanses gets one of the most ridiculous and kinda-embarrassing goals against ever. To put it more simply, it was the least sanitary Statue Of Liberty play I’ve ever seen.

Video is below.

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Swedish insurance company Folksam has brought together two of my favorite things: R. Kelly, and skydiving cats. And okay, as one of the comments points out, it’s less “skydiving cats” and more “putting cats in front of a green screen and turning on a fan,” but still, skydiving cats. (via The Daily What)

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I will handle this video’s title like I handle the opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I don’t know whether or not “Magisk” means “magic”, but I’m positive “klubbpass” means “club pass” and that the Swedish Elite League is awesome for even having a word for it. This is the coolest eight seconds since Luke Perry something something.

What you need to know, courtesy of Puck Daddy:

In an early December loss to Luleå Hockeyförening, [Oscar] Moller was on the receiving end of an unusual (and quite awesome) pass: Moller lost his stick in the offensive zone; his teammate returned it to its rightful owner by flipping it with his own stick back to Moller, all while transitioning to defense.

It’s seriously something the Mighty Ducks could’ve (and probably should’ve) pulled against evil Iceland at the ’94 Junior Goodwill Games. “This isn’t a hockey game, it’s a circus!” Of course, if you need real life pre-Crisis Gordons Bombay you don’t have to look any further than the NHL, who have a rule in place to prevent this kind of radical awesomeness:

“A player who has lost or broken his stick may only receive a stick at his own players’ bench or be handed one at his players’ bench or be handed one from a teammate on the ice. A player (Henrik Sedin) will be penalized if he throws, tosses, slides or shoots a stick to a teammate on the ice.”

They probably have regulations in place about the Knuckle Puck, too.

Tiger Woods is a jerk. He cheated on his beautiful wife, the mother of his two children, with upwards of 60,000 borderline-transvestite pornstars and strippers before exploding into a multimedia tornado of sorrowful remorse and terrible golf. He shouldn’t have done things to make his wife want to beat him to death with a golf club, and we should keep his actions hanging over his head for most of the rest of his life. But hey, just in case you’d tricked yourself into thinking his Swedish model wife Elin Nordegren was somehow a relatable human being betrayed by someone she truly loved, I’d like to direct you to her new boyfriend: Jamie Dingman.

I’m sorry, I’m being presumptuous. I’m sure he’s just like you and me. You know, if “you” were billionaire philanthropist Michael Dingman and I was your globetrotting son.

Dingman is an accomplished emerging-markets veteran who has represented his father’s interests in China for the past six years. In the mid-1990s, he specialized in Russian private equity funds. He also owned an IndyCar team sponsored by World Childhood Foundation, a charity founded by Queen Silvia of Sweden.

He splits his time between China and the Bahamas and recently spent time with Nordegren in Florida and Sweden.

When I was little I wanted to either be a fireman or an emerging-markets veteran.

How do you get to a point in your life where your two defining characteristics are “representing your father’s interests in China” and a specialization in Russian private equity funds? Proving that it’s not who you are but who you’re supposed to be, this gangly Mark Cuban-looking motherf**ker has also bedded Tom Brady’s baby mama Bridget Moynahan and the PRINCESS OF SWEDEN. I didn’t even know Sweden had a princess.

Don’t jump to conclusions: According to “a friend” (thanks, Fox Sports), he’s your everyday, Russian private equity fund-spreading Johnny Appleseed.

“He’s never been so happy. He and Elin have strong feelings for each other,” a friend said. “He’s a classic all-American guy. He’s handsome, a total gentleman and low-key. He’s never been in the press. Elin’s a very lucky girl; he’s a great guy but very private.”

Yes, this all sounds extremely low-key. It must be a wonderful life where you can divorce one of the most accomplished and recognizable athletes of the century and still be able to dismiss his accomplishments to your new boyfriend by saying “lol he played golf”.

Have you ever been to a baseball game and seen your favorite player warming up a few feet in front of you, but when you call out his name or try to ask him for an autograph he waves at you and moves or just ignores you completely? It’s not because he’s a dick, it’s because in today’s sports media world literally any interaction between an athlete and another human being will be reported, analyzed, misinterpreted and manipulated to suit the needs of a writer.

Such is the case of Josefine Öqvist, a Swedish soccer player who traded her jersey for a fan’s t-shirt following Sweden’s 1-0 victory over North Korea in group play of the Women’s World Cup on Saturday. I haven’t read anything explaining why she did it; she was probably just being cool and affable, because hey, she’d just won a World Cup game. 35 years ago they would’ve turned it into a Coke commercial. But today isn’t 35 years ago, it’s 35 minutes ago, so German News reported the incident and put a gigantic black bar across her torso to “censor” it.

So either the German news wanted us to think she’d been playing a World Cup soccer game without a bra and decided to flash everyone in the crowd, or the image of a woman in a sports bra was so potentially damaging to German children that it had to be halted. The best part of the video (besides NEIN! across her chest) is the higest rated YouTube comment, which reads like it was written by Kyle Farnsworth:

What the f**k in the world is that f**ken black box doing there she was f**ken dressed
jnmexico1997 19 hours ago

The uncensored version is now available, which you can watch after the cut.

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