Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Surviving the Bradocalypse

I'm not crying, I just got some radioactive ash in my eye.

Good morning, hockey fans! Last week we compared the free agent market to a swimsuit competition for toddlers; this week, we were going to discuss how Dallas Stars GM Joe has extended two middle fingers to conventional spend-happy hockey management by making the team bette—hold on, looks like my ham radio is getting another incoming emergency transmission! Let me fiddle with these hilariously oversized knobs for an hour until I can—

Just lost your #1 center? Joe Nieuwendyk ain't care.

—INCOMING TRANSMISSION

U.S. SURVIVAL GUIDE #2837R - SURVIVING THE BRADOCALYPSE

INTRODUCTION: If you are hearing this, that means your mandatory attempts have failed in one of the government-sponsored mass suicide pits and you are unfit to breed. You horse's ass. This broadcast is aimed exclusively at areas which have been abandoned by Brad Richards. If you are in an area that has robbed bank vaults for enough gold bullion to court Brad Richards but has been spurned, please tune into GOVERNMENT CHANNEL G-478 FOR HOPELESS CAUSES. If your primary mode of communication is something other than a HAM radio, the U.S. Government does not want anything to do with you or your offspring.

Our records indicate that it has been over four days since your city was evacuated by Brad Richards. Satellite photos of your area are inconclusive due to the enormous quantities of blood, from both humans and the guardian angels that proved incapable of protecting them. The handful of buildings taller than one story have been singled out for missile strikes to eliminate any contaminated mutants, and your city has been cordoned off from the rest of existence by a ring of heavy artillery and a protective moat filled with hot lava and molten vegemite.

For your own safety we have ordered roving gangs of shotgun-wielding killbots to shoot you on sight, and then to use specially-modified ecto-boots to kick your ghost in the genitals. Regiments of gorillas pumped with whale steroids and armed with poisonous chainsaws have been airdropped into your backyard, where they have been told that you think they look fat. If you are unconscious or asleep, these gorillas have been trained to stand over you with their head hovering two inches from your face until you wake up.

Pictured: "Action" Glen Sather examines his new prize, while GM Joe looks on, trapped behind an impenetrable and overpriced force field

Approximately seven seconds after Brad Richards effectively announced the next nine Stanley Cups would be automatically surrendered to the Rangers of New York, your leader, President Nieuwendyk, radioed in for emergency food and water and we responded by freezing all of your assets and ordering pizzas. The government has also dispatched a large number of third-liners from inhospitable deathscapes such as Phoenix and South Florida. It is unknown if they survived.

In conclusion, if you are in an area recently vacated by Brad Richards and still clinging to some shred of hope, please disregard said hope and accept your area's position as a hockey wasteland for duration of Brad Richards' contract, which has a half-life of 180,000 years. Previous areas devastated by the BRADOCALYPSE have suffered irreparable damage, unless you count the one fluke season in which they brought in a young, upcoming AHL coach, kept their core players and added an infusion of homegrown young talent, then lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champions by a single goal in overtime in a Game 7.

To prevent another such one-in-a-million accident from occurring, we have dispatched Barry Melrose to your area.

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