Wednesday satire – Juggernaut Penguins disbanded, Crosby achieves world peace

Scoring title, Hart Trophy, Pearson Trophy, Stanley Cup, enviro-crusader, city ambassador, world peace, United Nations recognition ... What's next for the affable Sid the Kid?

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and twenty-nine disgruntled team governors convened an emergency meeting in New York Monday evening and voted 29-0 in favour of disbanding the Pittsburgh Penguins, the defending Stanley Cup champions and after eight games, the best team so far this season.

“Enough is enough.  Eight is enough,” cried Boston owner Jeremy Jacobs, chanelling Dick Van Patten.  “Eight games and they’re already 7-1-0.  Two straight conference titles, one Stanley Cup.  I can’t take it anymore!”

“We need a neutral zone trap to slow them down,” muttered New Jersey owner Lou Lamoriello.

The twenty-eight other governors immediately threw commemorative paperweights at Lamoriello.  Bettman threw a tin of Junior Mints which hit Lamoriello square in the jaw.

“That’s for blasphemy,” Bettman tersely noted, coolly channelling Sean Connery.

Evidently, rumbling and grumbling among teams not named Pittsburgh Penguins had been brewing subtly in the gut of some NHL club owners since the summer, shortly after the Pens hoisted the Cup.  By early autumn, grumblings had gurgled and percolated into small bowel indigestion when the stark realization hit most teams that the Penguins championship roster was barely changed by off-season transactions.  The percolations rumbled and bubbled into the large bowels of the NHL offices in the form of secret, rambling, whiny, immature and incoherent memoranda addressed to deputy NHL head Bill Daly from Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit calling for Pittsburgh to be defrocked of their team.  By Monday, the twenty-second anniversary of Black Monday, the angry colonic vapours had gathered so much steam that it forced itself into the sigmoid colon of the hockey world – the dreaded NHL boardroom.

There, as proceedings began, Bettman called for a moment of silence to lament the stock market crash of 1987.  There were murmured rumours around the S-shaped meeting room table that Bettman called for a moment of silence for purely personal reasons.  In October of 1987, he was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed junior NHL office mailroom employee who would regale disinterested colleagues with tales of his investment prowess.  Apparently, he had secretly raised enough capital to finance four expansion franchises that autumn and was set to propose the idea to then-NHL president John Ziegler, when Wall Street went kaput, and in lock-step, so did Bettman’s expansion dream.  (For the record, the four teams were: the Lincoln (Neb.) Towncars, the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Chickenhawks, the Milltown (N.J.) Manatees and the Phoenix Coyotes).  All four are “twenty-first century industrial powerhouses!” he would frequently exclaim.

Three dreams died; one never did.

Thus Bettman silently squeaked out a giggle-chortle during his moment of silence, for he saw the opportunity to revive his expansion dream by breaking up the Pittsburgh Penguins and holding an emergency dispersal draft to stock the teams of his earlier dreams.

“Gary, Gary.  We hate Mario and his ironclad team as much as the next guy, but how can we pull this off without him suing us into the ground?” asked Mike Ilitch of Detroit.

“Very carefully, my little Caesar.  I’ve threatened to expose how he nearly food poisoned me back in September when I visited his mansion.” Bettman replied.  “Bad borscht I recall, led to a heart attack.  That’s a $900-million lawsuit right there.”

Without further ado, the dispersal draft began, player by player, team by team.

It all makes sense now. This is why Marc-Andre Fleury does all of his post-game locker room interviews topless.

Captain Sidney Crosby, was drafted first overall by the last-place New York Islanders, setting off a chain reaction of positive news for the tarnished Long Island region.  The aw-shucks, boyish Crosby mediated the interminable impasse between local government and Islanders’ owner Charles Wang, producing a new land development and arena deal, thus ensuring the team would stay in New York.  The peacemaking Crosby then visited gritty New York neighbourhoods and within two months the city’s crime rate dropped to zero.  Crosby became a Manhattan city ambassador for affordable housing and by New Year’s Day, every homeless person found shelter in the development’s new condos.  After scoring his six hundredth point of the season in early January, Crosby was allowed to skip practice to join Al Gore at a landmark pro-environmental conference.  “I have a confession to make,” started Gore.  “Sidney Crosby actually invented the internet when he was thirteen.  He’s also eliminated all industrial pollution on the eastern seaboard and the United Nations just signed a declaration of world peace – the Treaty of Crosby.  All because of Sidney.”

“Aw shucks, gee whiz,” said Crosby on the dais, shuffling his feet, turning red with embarassment.

Predictably, Evgeni Malkin went second in the draft, but not to the sad-sack Toronto Maple Leafs.  Toronto originally held the pick, but true to their inimitable form, the Leafs dealt the rights to Malkin to San Jose for two used 1969 Dodge Chargers, reportedly from the dusty set of Dukes of Hazzard.  “This is a great day for Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment.  This will allow us to grow our brand among rednecks and the women who love them,” brayed team executive Richard Peddie.  Local Toronto news media reported 13,839 suicides one hour after the trade.

Centre Jordan Staal was drafted third by Carolina, joining his brother Eric in Raleigh.  “Yeee-hawwwwwwwhh!!!” the Staal brothers screeched, in unison.  “Now we can moonshine.  Legally.  Under the arena bleachers!”  Local Raleigh news media reported 13,839 handguns firing into the air at the exact moment of the Staal brothers pronouncement.

Fourth and fifth picks Marc-Andre Fleury and Maxime Talbot went to Montreal in a complicated pre-draft deal that saw the Habs acquire both Quebec natives.  The two had quietly demanded to be drafted as a pair in order to join Cirque du Soleil.  Fleury and Talbot, best friends on the Penguins, wanted to add their budding, ribald, French-Canadian cabaret act, which included coarse insults against their Catholic schooling, animal-trapeze acts and the unspeakable music of Celine Dion and Mitsou Gelinas, as a sideshow to the world famous Cirque.  (author’s note: to my non-Canadian readers, Google “Mitsou” at your own risk.)

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A few days after the draft, Penguins general manager Ray Shero visited Lemieux at his mansion.  “We’re ruined, Mario.  A decade of drafting and shrewd trades and signings down the crapper.”

“Not true.”

“What?!?”

“I’m going to save this franchise.  Again.” Lemieux said, as a tailor fitted a pair of hockey socks on his feet.  “I’m unretiring.  Again.”

Photos: Flickr Creative Commons [1], [2], [3], [4]