Grab Bag: Playoff excuses, ultimate losers and Alex Trebek with a mullet

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My spies have gathered excuses from the NHL's playoff losers
- Where things stand with a possibly historic Ultimate Loser race
- An obscure player who shares a record with Wayn Gretzky and Joe Pavelski
- The month's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at Alex Trebek, his mullet, and the cheesy glory of the 1993 NHL awards

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What went wrong? Excuses from the NHL's losers

It's called Therriening. It's just like Tebowing,
except for the part where you have a prayer.

The first round of the playoffs is finally over, which means we're down to eight teams left standing. Those teams deserve a round of applause, and they'll get it… somewhere else. Because as long-time readers know, the end of the first round also means it's time for our annual tribute to the 22 teams whose seasons ended without even winning a single series.

Yes, the losers. The also-rans. The teams that, if we're being honest, basically wasted everyone's time by even bothering to show up this year.

Luckily, every loser has an excuse, and these 22 teams are no exception. So while everyone else is focused on the eight remaining teams, here's a look back at what went wrong for the rest of the league.

Anaheim Ducks - Over the last few days, every time Bruce Boudreau started a team meeting by shouting "Let's come up with a plan for finishing off those Wings!" we'd all sit there in the dark for an hour before realizing he'd just gone to lunch.

Montreal Canadiens - Should probably have let Carey Price do the triple-low-five in the playoffs against the Senators, since it would have been nice to see his glove hand actually make contact with something every now and then.

New York Islanders - When coaches urged the team to go out and match the Penguins in every area of the game during their first round series, in hindsight they probably should have made a point to exclude "terrible goaltending".

New Jersey Devils - Never got over the loss of that 29th overall first round pick we forfeited last year, we assume, because man it would have been completely ridiculous for us not to.

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