Tips for your day with the Stanley Cup

So far, Stanley hasn't called him back.

As the offseason winds on, most of the hockey world is focused on the negative. But while the ongoing Kovalchuk debacle and ominous signs of renewed labour strife dominate the headlines, one of the sport’s most positive annual traditions is well underway and could be coming to a town near you.

Over the course of the summer, each member of the champion Chicago Blackhawks is enjoying their “day with the Cup”, leading the trophy through a tour of small towns, big cities, and community barbeques. Each stop along the way is a feel-good story, as fans young and old are given a rare chance to spend time with the greatest trophy in all of sports.

But while each player is given free reign to determine how to spend their day with the Cup, the league does provide some guidance. Every year, each player receives a printed memo from the NHL head office with a few tips to help things run smoothly.

Most fans never get to see that top secret memo. That's about to change, since I just happen to have come into possession of a copy which I’ve reproduced below.

* * *

Dear miscellaneous NHL player,

Congratulations on winning the Stanley Cup! As per hockey tradition, you are now entitled to spend one full day with the trophy in a location of your choice.

Before you plan your big day, however, the National Hockey League would like to offer several suggestions which could help make your time more enjoyable.

• Consider having several small cards printed up that explain that the Stanley Cup is a trophy awarded to the NHL champion at the end of every season. This will save you from having to constantly stop and explain everything to lifelong Vancouver Canuck fans who have never seen it before.
  
  
• You’re likely to meet fans who will want to take photos of their children or grandchildren sitting in the bowl of the Cup. For reference, the Cup can safely hold the weight of one large toddler, two small babies, or three Montreal Canadiens forwards.
  
  
• The Stanley Cup is notable for its tradition of recording past champions by etching their names onto the sides of the trophy. Given how easily the Cup can be scratched or dented, please respect the league’s history by only dropping it so that it lands on forgotten teams the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning or 2006 Carolina Hurricanes.
  
  
• When describing your Cup win as “easily the greatest moment of my entire life”, be sure to awkwardly add “um, obviously other than my wedding day” if you think your wife may be listening.
  
  
• The Stanley Cup is 117 years old. If you decide to spend your day at Denny’s, save money by ordering its meal off the senior’s menu.
  
  
• If you happen to meet an Ottawa Senators fan, he will inevitably want to tell you about all the Stanley Cups his team won a hundred years ago. As a representative of the National Hockey League, please do your best to listen to him politely for at least three full minutes before pulling the nearest fire alarm.
  
  
• Remember that the Cup is made entirely of metal, and is therefore prone to rust if exposed to excessive moisture. Please keep it away from Jeremy Roenick, in case he gets a glimpse of it and starts bawling like coliccy baby again.
  
  
• Please keep in mind that the Cup has been handled by literally thousands of players and fans over the years. Consider giving it a quick wipe with a paper towel before letting your newborn drink formula out of it.
  
  
• Impress your friends by pointing out that the engravings on the Stanley Cup include several typos and other errors. For example, in 1975 Bob Gainey’s name is misspelled as “Gainy”. In 1981, the New York Islanders are misspelled as “Ilanders”. And in 1999, the Buffalo Sabres are misspelled as “the Dallas Stars”.
  
  
• Occasionally, a young child may ask you why the trophy doesn’t list a champion for the 2004-05 season. This is a complicated subject, so the best way to answer this question is to ask the child to hand you their allowance, use it to light an expensive cigar, and then blow smoke rings in their face while pointing at them and laughing.
  
  
• Finally, for members of the 2010 Chicago Blackhawks: Be sure to block off some time in your schedule for Stan Bowman to call and tell you which team you’ve been traded to.
  

The final four: Who should Leaf fans be cheering for?

For the sixth season in a row, the NHL's final four is taking place without an appearance by the Maple Leafs. That means that the league's largest fan base has nobody to cheer for. And with the second round elimination of the Canucks, there's not even a Canadian team left for Leaf fans to pretend to be cheering for while secretly rooting against.

What's a Leaf fan to do? Yes, OK, but besides watching John Tavares highlight tapes and fondling themselves, what's a Leaf fan to do?

I'm not here to give you the answer, but I do want you to make an informed decision. So here, from a Leaf fan's perspective, are some of the reasons to root for (or against) the four remaining teams.

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Detroit Red Wings

Plus: In this economy, having the Stanley Cup stay in Detroit for another year increases chances that Maple Leafs will eventually be able to buy it in a Windsor pawn shop.

Minus: Their second round victory over the Anaheim Ducks provided disturbing evidence that teams built by Brian Burke can sometimes still lose.

Plus: As the top remaining seed, are the team most likely to win the final round in a sweep. Which, based on the schedule, is the only way these playoffs are ending before July.

Minus: A raucous Stanley Cup celebration could endanger us all by startling Zombie Chris Chelios.

Plus: Occasional news of a Red Wings championship is the only joy left in the life of Bob Probert, as he spends his post-retirement days in the concrete underground bunker he constructed to avoid Wendel Clark.

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Chicago Blackhawks

Plus: Sort of tough to root against the team that gave us Stu Grimson, Dave Manson, and the quivering corpse of Mike Peluso.

Minus: Their upset win over the Canucks brought on the start of Kyle Wellwood's off-season much earlier than expected, possibly leading to summer-long food shortages in Western Canada.

Plus: An appearance in finals might lead to someone mentioning that the Hawks have the longest current NHL championship drought, which would be news to the majority of Canadian hockey fans who assume that the Leafs do.

Minus: If the Hawks win a Cup, a gleeful Toronto media will no doubt produce a flood of stories about the Leafs drought now being the NHL's longest, including one article produced solely by Howard Berger dry-humping his keyboard.

Plus: Are proving that a team can win despite overpaid and sub-par goaltending, which might help create an off-season market for Vesa Toskala.

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Pittsburgh Penguins

Plus: Offer hope to Leafs fans by proving that a decade of constant losing, front office incompetence, and almost total irrelevance can result in a pretty darn good roster.

Minus: Every game they win means a few more days of having to look at Sidney Crosby's child molester moustache playoff beard.

Plus: Jordan Staal's showdown with brother Eric will inevitably result in TSN doing a "top ten hockey brothers of all-time" countdown, and it will be nice to see Luke and Brayden Schenn in the #1 spot.

Minus: Not really fair for them to win this year's Stanley Cup, since they're already pencilled in to win the next five or six.

Plus: Feature an inspiring feel-good story in form of defenceman Hal Gill, the only player ever signed by John Ferguson Jr. who is still playing in the NHL.

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Carolina Hurricanes:

Plus: Each win results in more momentum for the idea of Cam Ward starting for the Canadian Olympic team in place of Roberto Luongo, which is great news assuming you're among the 99.5% of the world's population that isn't from Canada.

Minus: Sometimes, their runs to the Cup final result in Leafs getting stuck with their loser coach.

Plus: If they win, Leaf fans won't have to put up with annoying trash-talk from die-hard Hurricanes fans, since there aren't any.

Minus: Yet another Cup ring for Frantisek Kaberle might make brother Tomas start to have second thoughts about this whole "have zero interest in ever playing for a winning team" policy.

Plus: A championship run would help with publicity for Scott Walker's admirable new charity, "Beat Cervical Cancer by Sucker Punching it in the Face".

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The bottom line: I think when you weigh the evidence, the final verdict is pretty clear. Leafs Nation, we can all agree on this, right?

Yeah, I thought so. Pass the Tavares highlights.

Round two scouting reports

A few days ago, we took a look at the NHL's 22 losers that are sitting at home. Now let's turn our attention to the teams that are still alive, with a round two scouting report.

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Washington Capitals

Strengths:

• Are wisely keeping starting goaltender Jose Theodore extremely well-rested.
  
• Have so much depth that they were somehow able to win a game seven despite absence of Donald Brashear
  
• Intimidating fans are known to loudly questions opposing players' sexuality, which is pretty rich coming from guys who chant "We Want Semin".

Weakness:

• Star player Alexander Ovechkin often spends as much as four of five minutes every period just sitting on bench, doing nothing.

How to beat them:

• Let Ovechkin get a few goals early; hope he tires himself out celebrating.

-- vs. --

Pittsburgh Penguins

Strengths:

• Feature a roster full of excellent young players due to strong scouting, patient coaching, and drafting first overall ten years in a row.
  
• Have drawn inspiration from undisputed locker room leader, the mummified corpse of Gary Roberts.
  
• In the long history of talented players to come out of Russia, Evgeni Malkin will quite possibly go down as the second best one to ever play in this series.

Weakness:

• Extra slippery ice at Mellon Arena sometimes causes team's star players to fall down for no reason at all.

How to beat them:

• Don't punch the crap out of Maxime Talbot, apparently.

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Carolina Hurricanes

Strengths:

• Coach Paul Maurice has referred to leadership core as "easily the most dedicated group of players I've seen in, oh, three years".
  
• Enjoy unrivaled home ice advantage thanks to savvy fans who save up energy by only remembering that hockey exists once the playoffs start.
  
• Is probably not mathematically impossible for them to win the Cup this year.

Weakness:

• Are still, when you get right down to it, the Hartford Whalers.

How to beat them:

• Employ a goalie who is not so fat that he gets winded at the very end of every close game.

-- vs. --

Boston Bruins

Strengths:

• In recent big games, have been pretty good at remembering how many players you're allowed to have on the ice.
  
• Zdeno Chara able to calmly clear puck from goalmouth scrambles without leaving bench.
  
• Will be feeding off the energy of an entire state full of douchey, bandwagon-jumping sports fans who haven't had a championship to celebrate in like ten whole months

Weakness:

• May be rusty coming off of first-round bye.

How to beat them:

• Remind Tim Thomas that he is, in fact, Tim Thomas.

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Anaheim Ducks

Strengths:

• Roster was largely assembled by Brian Burke, who is unanimously considered the smartest man alive.
  
• Disorient opponents by annoyingly playing all their home games way later than everyone else.
  
• Virtually every player on roster is an experienced fighter not intimidated by violence, which will come in handy if team bus breaks down on way to arena in Detroit

Weakness:

• It's possible that Ryan Getzlaf may have got some choking loser germs on him while fighting Joe Thornton.

How to beat them:

• Somehow trick them into thinking it's the regular season.
  

-- vs. --

Detroit Red Wings

Strengths:

• Are known for superior conditioning, which will allow players to recover more quickly from Chris Pronger cheapshots.
  
• Are so solid defensively that even terrible goaltender Chris Osgood can win multiple championships for them.
  
• In a pinch, some guy they drafted 200th overall last year will just emerge as a future hall-of-famer.

Weakness:

• Might be getting bored of winning the Stanley Cup by now.

How to beat them:

• Get to overtime of game seven. Let tiny Russian man-child do the rest.
  

---

Chicago Blackhawks

Strengths:

• Winning percentage is significantly higher indoors than out.
  
• Martin Havlat has bought into team's disciplined approach so much that he hardly ever kicks anyone in the groin any more.
  
• Somehow managed to turn an old man dying of cancer into a feel-good story.

Weakness:

• Winning game one of the Flames series 12 seconds into sudden death was a foolish waste of an opportunity to amass valuable overtime experience.

How to beat them:

• Hold all games in a nightclub that checks ID, thus eliminating most of the Hawks best players.
  

-- vs. --

Vancouver Canucks

Strengths:

• Have this guy named Sedin who is so lightning quick that he often sets himself up for one-timers.
  
• Own an excellent record when scoring first, largely because their goalie gets a shutout every game.
  
• Are lead by veteran Mats Sundin, for whom "winning a Stanley Cup" is unquestionably a top ten non-poker-related personal goal.

Weakness:

• Players run slightly higher than average risk of contracting lice due to habit of pulling opponent's hair when getting ass kicked in fight.

How to beat them:

• Hope that Roberto Luongo's wife has a baby three or four times during the series.

The new math

Welcome to the NHL's new math, courtesy of the Bettman Era.

• The Leafs play Ottawa on Saturday. Heading into the game, the Leafs are 3-2-1 against the Senators. If the Leafs manage a regulation loss and an overtime win in their next two against Ottawa, both teams will finish with a 4-3-1 record against each other. In other words, both teams will win the season series.
  
  
• Speaking of Ottawa, the Senators are currently in fifth place, four points ahead of the Rangers (who have a game in hand). The Rangers have been hot lately and could easily catch Ottawa in the next week. That would be bad news for them, since the fifth place team gets to play the fourth seed and the sixth place team gets to play the third seed. In the East, it's quite possible that the fourth seed will be either Pittsburgh or New Jersey. The third seed will be either Carolina or Washington.
  
  In other words, there's a very good chance that this year's #4 seed will actually be the second best team in the conference points-wise, while the #3 seed could be the eighth (or even ninth) best. Moving "up" from the sixth seed to the fifth spot will probably mean a first round matchup with a team that's up to 10-15 points better.
  
  
• As of today, 25 of the league's 30 teams are over .500. There's a realistic chance that as many as 28 or 29 teams could end the year over .500.

My head hurts.

A note to Gary Bettman: A league that desperately needs to regain its credibility isn't doing itself any favors by having standings that nobody can take seriously.

Please, NHL, wake up and fix this mess in time for next year.