Thursday Morning Cupcheck - ‘Twas an NHL Christmas

by Todd Maternowski

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Hockey could use a little X-mas cheer these days.

Good morning, hockey fans! Last week we got a little giddy about a certain Dallas Stars prospect. This week, we're all a little giddy about something else: something which I refuse to jinx by calling it out prematurely.

Of course, I'm talking about the end-ay of the ockout-lay!

While we at the august institution of the Cupcheck have a long-standing, month-long moratorium on all things NHL lockout, it's time to toss that mess in the trash and celebrate the tremendous gift the NHL and NHLPA are inevitably about to give us: real, professional, hockey on or around Christmas Day. So what better way to celebrate than a poem from 150 years ago? (clears throat, whips homemade scarf around jauntily)

What? Too pithy for you? Deal with it, chumpettes.

Twas an NHL Christmas

Twas an NHL Christmas, and all through New York

Hobos were chewing on rancid saltpork

Amid drugs and cheap floozies with lots of back hair

Some hockey reporters got drunk in Times Square.

It'd been months since any had taken their meds

As Night Train Express plowed right through their heads.

"$200 million is such a huge gap,

Just take hockey out back for a lead-induced nap."

When out in the street there arose such a clatter,

They lurched from the bar to see what was the matter.

Stumbling past winos and a Finnish flasher,

They ran smack right into a Winnipeg Thrasher.

In a minute they saw that they did indeed know

These men who exhibited post-coital glow.

This bunch of carousers did then appear

To have mixed X and meth in their flavorless beer.

With a little old leader so lively and quick,

They'd just left the strip club called Ye Olde Spotted Dick.

More rapid than cheetahs his curses they came,

As he turned to his buddies and called them by name,

"Now Chipman! Now Edwards! Now Burkle and Vinik!

On Crosby, on Backes, on Crombeen, that cynic!

I may not be handsome, good looking or tall,

But I'll hold my own in a CBA brawl!"

The reporters' jaws dropped as they could not deny

That they knew well, this loathsome bad guy.

The old Boston owner with Khrushchev's world view

Was leading the owners --and some players, too.

He cried poverty without offering proof,

He killed 80s hockey like a Shia LaBeouf.

He took a sound league and just ran it aground,

Trading Ray Bourque in a trade so unsound,

That Bruins fans cried when their hero did put

On a dumb-looking jersey that featured a foot.

With so many bad trades it's just hard to keep track

Of a man who pulls his ideas from his butt crack.

Dangling a puppet he called 'Old Crotch Stain Gary,'

He made poor teams more poor, then sipped day-old sherry.

From lockouts to shootouts to those pucks that glow,

Someone should take him to the Tree of Woe.

He's got hockey's short hairs in his yellowed teeth

And blindsides the players just like Duncan Keith.

He scooped up old Sens like big Chara and Kelly

Then laughed as they pounded his rivals to jelly.

"But something is different, he's beside himself,

Like that Maple Leafs fan that thinks he's an elf."

The hockey reporters approached him with dread,

But players and owners alike loudly said,

"The time for old Jacobs to act like a jerk

Is over, so now we can get back to work.

In that strip club we saw impressive shows,

And decided to start acting like seasoned pros."

They sprang to their taxis and then gave a whistle

Then flew to the next club like a guided missile.

The reporters heard both sides 'ere they drove out of sight,

"Merry Christmas, you fans, now go buy stuff, alright?"

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