Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants

Decorating for Christmas is almost as much fun as Christmas itself. Pulling the Rubbermaid bins from the closet and unwrapping the crumpled tissue within can unleash a joy that obliterates anything imagined by the Big Eastern Syndicate.

The best part is reconnecting with the memories. Almost every item in our holiday collection inspires laughter and a gleeful, “Do you remember …?”

Case in point: Naughty Santa and Captain Underpants. Photos printed off the internet and slipped into frames from the dollar store, it just ain’t Christmas without them.

Truly, I don’t recall exactly when Naughty Santa was conceived, though the shot of John Taylor wearing a Santa hat and tilting that eyebrow the way only he can was a goofball sock stuffer, one of those off-the-cuff trinkets designed to get a giggle on Christmas morning. I put it together for Ter near the end of our tenure at Rockland, and while she loved it on sight, she retaliated with a vengeance a few years later.

2011 was the worst Christmas of my entire life. What had begun as a fresh start in a new residence had blown up three months into our lease and suddenly our treasured Yuletide celebration became an ordeal to be endured. We did the best we could, but by the morning of December 25, we were going through the motions. The only gift I remember from that darkest of holidays was the helpless laughter that erupted when I ripped off the wrapping to reveal a photo of my hormonal hockey crush, posing proudly in his Calvins. I screamed, I laughed, I cried, and I will love Ter forever for giving me that moment of unbridled joy when I had thought I’d never laugh again.

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Twistin’ By The Pool

my 2015-16 fantasy team

My executive director stuck his head inside my office on Wednesday. “Got a minute?”

“Make it fast,” I replied. “The pool draft starts in twelve minutes!”

He stepped over the threshold and dropped his voice. “I’ve done f*** about my picks. Can you resend me the link?”

I gaped at him. “Are you kidding me? I worked on mine for three hours last night! Oh—and Phil Kessel is with Pittsburgh now.”

My über-boss, who has a framed Leafs jersey signed by Wendel Clark hanging in his office, nodded. “I’ll probably pick him anyway. Just send me the link.”

I flashed it at him, our respective doors closed, and the games began.

A couple of years ago, before he took over the division’s helm, he drafted Claude Giroux before I could. I have not forgotten that, apparently, because when I saw that he had eighth pick over my seventh, I thought, Ha! No Giroux for you, buddy! All I had to do was fret through the first six picks, but I was able to nab my top guy.

We have a couple of rookies in the pool this year. I’m a veteran by now, the first female to join in 2010-11 and now comprising maybe a third of fifteen members for the 2015-16 season. Word has spread—and my old nemesis, the wire-and-fake-fur-Flyer fan, is back in the fold after a brief stint with another ministry. Figures that he drafted Jake Voracek and Ryan Kesler just when I was planning to click the button behind him.

Of course you know that this means war.

Or would do, except that the bulk of my roster features more players than not who made my list the day before the draft. Okay, so Nazem Kadri made it from sheer desperation, though I deliberately gunned for James Van Riemsdyk. I’ve got two young defencemen, one going into his second year which often results in a slump, but I’m hopeful that his talent will prevail. If not, veteran BC boy Brent Seabrook will come off the bench to replace him.

If my top five stay healthy, I have as good a chance as any—and better than the poolie who drafted Martin St. Louis and Daniel Briere. It had to have been one of the rookies. ESPN gaffed by leaving these guys on the list, but anyone following the sports news would have known that both players retired in the summer.

Easy pickin’s? Meh. It’s more fun to watch the stats and participate in the chirping. As I emailed when the draft was done, and in keeping with my reputation for choosing photogenic faces, “May the best-looking team win!”

Puckin’ Around

In all the excitement of my working holiday, I forgot to mention the results of the regular season hockey pool. Ever the groundbreaker, I was part of the first-ever tie for second place, which entitles me to half of the runner-up prize money. In all fairness, I tried to get the pool administrator to list my fellow second placer ahead of me in the archival list, since his team had more goals than mine, but the response surprised me. My team won as many points in fewer games, so my name precedes Craig’s for all posterity, and I get half the cash. I’m amazed to have got that far; between January and March, I seemed doomed to stay in fifth place, but in true “gotta make the playoffs” fashion, my guys made a mad dash to the finish and suddenly I owned the second spot by one point. It literally took the last game of the season to determine the final pool placements. The office pool was a wilder ride than the league standings this year.

I doubt I’ll do so well in the playoff pool.

I became a temporary Canuck fan for the first round of post-season. They pushed their series to six games and lost in Calgary on the weekend—I hope no one loses their job over it, since they exceeded all expectation after last year’s atomic coaching failure. The players themselves seemed surprised to have made the playoffs.

Which may have been their undoing.

It was acutely evident to me that the primary difference between the Flames and Canucks was their attitude. The Flames played like they were thinking, “We made it here; we can do this!” and the Canucks were, “We made it here? Can we do this?” In the end, they couldn’t. They blew a three goal lead and lost 7-4 in game six. But I, a proud Canadian, am rooting for Anaheim in the conference semi-final, and here’s why:

Calgary was in the lead, 5-4. The Canucks pulled their goalie with a minute left. With thirty seconds left, the Flames scored in the empty net. Vancouver was obviously done, gone, kaput, and the kids from Calgary were on their way to the next round. So they didn’t have to score a second empty-netter with nine seconds left. But they did. And they celebrated like it was a major coup. It wasn’t. It was just rude. No class at all. Shame, shame, shame, little boys.

They’ll have their hands full with the Ducks, though. Anaheim grounded the Jets in four, and with Ryan Kesler heating up, the Flames may be the ones who get roasted.

We’re … 25th?!

First day of vacation and I wake up wondering where I write to complain about the new format at Hockey Night in Canada. The Flames are in Vancouver tonight, but I dunno – the draw isn’t the same since Kesler’s become a Duck and I don’t remember when I last watched an early game because the broadcast team is intolerably annoying.

Then I look at the schedule and see that Philly is visiting the Leafs in Toronto. That changes everything!

A few days ago, the boys had clawed their way into 22^nd place in the league standings. Surely they’ve improved since then; they have lots of time to make the playoffs now that their losing trend is over.

Ha!

As of this morning, they’ve slid down into 25^th.

^%$&*$

I’m still tuning in at 4:00. I can’t miss a chance to see them, especially playing against the 10^th place Leafs. It is, after all, my first day of vacation and the Leafs are my father’s team. A hockey dinner of mince and tatties await, and however the game turns out, I’ll have seen my Flyers.

It remains to be seen if Dad stays in my will.

Farewell to Kes

He’s the reason why I was a borderline Canucks fan for the past few years. Now I am free to disdain them with impunity. Ryan Kesler, now with Anaheim, did not deserve the raspberries he got from the crowd on his return to Vancouver Thursday night.

The man is a horse. He logs big ice time and never slacks off. So he wanted to get out of town after the disastrous 13/14 season. Who doesn’t think of changing jobs after a decade at the same place? Maybe he didn’t like the then-coach who the then-GM hired after firing Alain Vigneault. Neither did anyone else. Maybe he got on some of his teammate’s nerves. Alpha males will do that. Or maybe he got discouraged after the Game 7 loss in 2011/12, when fans in jerseys bearing his name and number were setting fire to police cars. Vancouver is a hard city in which to play any sport, but hockey is particularly dicey. Philadelphia fans are ugly, but they’ve never rioted in the streets after losing a Stanley Cup final. Vancouver fans have done it twice. They’re brutal, especially to ex-pats who depart under unfortunate circumstances.

I don’t know why Kesler wanted to leave the team, but I certainly don’t fault him for it. He was a force in the most recent glory days, playing injured in the playoffs and threatening to eclipse Henrik Sedin for conduct becoming a team captain. He scored goals. He helped others score goals. He took lumps for the team and gave as good as he got in a scrap. He was a star for them … and the fans boo when he stands on the opposite side of the red line. There’s gratitude for you.

I wish him well in Anaheim. No regrets here, boy. Well, maybe I have one.

He’d have been a dandy Flyer.

Hockey Woes of a Hockey Ho

#16, Captain Bobby Clarke
circa Ru's Hormonal Ignition

When I was growing up, Hockey Night in Canada was nothing more than the program that ran after The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. At that point, my parents were affluent enough to have acquired a second TV, a portable black and white, to solve the burgeoning viewing issues between the men and the women in the house. My father and two brothers would disappear upstairs at 8:00 on Saturday night. I’d stay in the living room with my mother, two sisters and the “big” TV. I don’t remember what we watched, but at infrequent intervals, the war cry of the male sports fan would shake the walls from upstairs: “He SCOOOORES!!”

Flash forward to February 1974. The family had relocated to BC, save the firstborn son who stayed in Ontario to pursue his own path. My second brother (“the Handsome One”) was about to be married and my father was about to lose his hockey-watching buddy. Mum took my sisters and me aside to suggest that Dad might appreciate it if his daughters developed some interest in the Great Canadian Game. It didn’t have to be an obsessive interest, but enough that one of us could sit with him for a while and know something of what was happening on screen.

In typical Ru fashion, I took it to heart.

One day I wandered into the living room where Dad was watching his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. I plunked myself onto the sofa and asked who they were playing. It turned out to be the Philadelphia Flyers.

Talk about a destiny point.

I decided—because I always enjoy contradicting my father—to stay the course and root for the opposition to his team. Harmless fun, right? Only I was almost 14 years old and got a glimpse of the Flyers’ captain. Whoa-ho-hoaaa, Nellie! Flowing blond curls and an angel face. He was missing his front teeth and had a potty mouth to boot, but apparently I’m good with that for I fell immediately in love.

From that moment, I was a blood-and-bone Flyer fan.

They won back-to-back Cups during my first two years and haven’t seen one since, though they got pretty darned close a few years ago. Captain Bobby Clarke has graduated from legendary warrior hero to management scum, but I still wear a jersey with his name and number on the back. For years, Dad and I spent every Saturday and Wednesday night in the den downstairs, watching hockey no matter who was playing. We saw the Edmonton Oilers in their gangly, coltish youth (Paul Coffey was a serious threat to Clarkie for a time) and I tried to change my allegiance to a Canadian team so full of energy and promise. I did well, thanks to #7, but when the Flyers came to town, I accidentally cheered when they scored on the Oilers. That was a sign.

I bleed black and orange.

I lost touch for a while. Young adulthood has different priorities, but I was always aware of the Flyers. Dad kept me apprised, with the regulation plethora of sarcastic sidebar comments attributed to embittered Leaf fans, but I didn’t watch a game for almost a decade. I missed the Oilers’ Stanley Cup dynasty and the retiring of Clarke’s number in Philadelphia.

Then one day while flipping channels in 1995, I landed on a TOR/PHI game and called my father to razz him. I don’t recall who won that game, but my passion for the sport was rekindled with a flamethrower, and since then, if there’s a game on, I’ll watch it.

Playoffs are the worst. I get so stressed out that I’m practically fetal by the end of a game, and the deeper my team gets is directly related to how shredded my nerves are. The Philly/Boston series three years ago nearly killed me. The Flyers were down 3-0 in the best of seven and had given up three goals in Game 4. By some miracle (due no doubt to my savaging of the Universe between periods), they clawed their way back to win the game, the series and the eastern conference final, but the effort drained them and they couldn’t beat Chicago for the Cup. &*^%$

Their series against Pittsburgh last year was a literal riot, rife with goals and penalty minutes. It was truly wild fun, and they won that round, but blew it to New Jersey in the conference semi-final. ^$#%*

They haven’t been the same since Mike Richards was traded to LA. And now that captain Chris Pronger looks like he’s done for good, there’s nothing holding them together. This half-baked season was a nightmare that couldn’t have been saved if they’d had another 34 games. They have some truly talented forwards—I consistently lose Claude Giroux to someone else in the office hockey pool, &^$%#—but there’s not much on the blue line and whatever the heck Bryzgalov thinks is in his job description, it isn’t stopping the puck. Sigh.

The regular season isn’t over until Tuesday, but the Flyers were officially finished last week. So were the Oilers, so the 2013/14 Stanley Cup playoffs will be easier on my nerves (sort of), and on Ter’s. She spends a lot of time talking me off the ledge at this time of year despite being a passionate fan herself. Edmonton born, she’s all about the Oilers and sick at their 7 year non-playoff drought, but no one beats me for drama. I’ve got a hate-on for most of the eastern conference teams and don’t care for many in the west, either; not the ones who got to the playoffs this year, anyway. National pride carries some weight: when my first choice goes out, I will cheer a Canadian team to the final … I sure wish Winnipeg had made it.

Sigh.

We’ll see what my heart does in the first round. I really hate to do this, but in the long run, I may have to become a temporary V-V-V … Nope, can’t do it. Can’t become enough of a Canuck fan to hope they win the Cup. I really like Ryan Kesler, though. I’d be okay if he won it – and the way the rest of the team has played, if they do repeat the final with a better outcome, it will be by riding on his back.

He was once owned by Philadelphia. What the heck were they thinking?

Sigh.