Dear NHL: All Your Meats Are Belong To Us

So now that we’ve all managed to somehow come down from the euphoric highs surrounding the Swedish Midget Little Person Convention and Calf Roping Festival, it’s time to turn our attention to that most glorious of days, the morning…er…afternoon of which hockey fans across the league will leap out of bed at the crack of noon and rush headlong to the den to find out what Gary Clause has left for them under their Officially Licensed NHL Beer Fridges (and then stain their Officially Licensed NHL jammies with their burning tears upon realizing there is no television coverage until five in the afternoon! Seriously TSN. WTF??)

I refer, of course, to Free Agent Day, falling, as always, on July 1^st for your convenience (or as we Canuckistanians like to call it: Great National Drunken BBQ Day).

The storylines will be many. The dollar amounts will be obscene. The potential comedic gold will be…stupefying. Who will be the next contestant on “Kiss Jaromir’s Ass!”? Who will once again overpay for The Great False Hope that is Marian Hossa? Will Sean Avery fulfill his pact with Satan and sign with the Laffs (hint: see below)?

And most important of all, how will The Bryan placate the howling mob? As could be expected, we here at Five For Smiting would like to offer a few suggestions.

So, without further ado, we are pleased to give you the top ten free agents we’d like to see wearing the Condom Logo next year. Ranked by Degree of Inappropriate Arousal (a complex mathematical formula involving player stats from last year, their salaries, our ability to fit them under the Cap, the degrees of separation from Elisha Cuthbert and the square of Pi) and presented in ascending order (that’s “lowest” to “highest” for you Leafers), we’ll roll out numbers 10 through 5 today, with the finest five to run Saturday. Excited yet? Didn’t think so, but here we go anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, start your pitchforks. Drum roll is optional.

10: Sean Avery (DIA 2.6 – mild interest characterized by quick up-and-down scan. Firmly ensconced in the “in a pinch” file):

Imagine how much fun we could have now that Darcy Fucking Tucker has finally been taken out behind the barn and “Ole Yeller’d” . Eight times a season, we could unleash Satan’s Spawn on the now defenceless Laffs. Eight times a season, we’d be the ones laughing, rubbing their faces into the ice and spitting on Vesa Toskala’s battered corpse. HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW BITCH! Yeah, that would be sweet. In the meantime, we can keep Sean locked in the basement, feeding him raw meat and keeping him good and angry using an endless loop of Air Supply. Oh come now. Stop acting so shocked and appalled. You were thinking it too, so you may as well just admit it and move on.

9: Daymond Langkow (DIA 3.2 – moistened upper lip, slight dampness in the palms):

Assuming we could ever pry him from the cold dead hands of Mike Keenan, his 65 points and a genuine honest-to-Christ sense of defensive responsibility would make him a sweet addition to the second line. What? Waddya mean Keenan’s still alive?

8: Ty Conklin (DIA 3.9 – pupil dilation accompanied by small increase in heart rate):

Okay. Hands up everybody who thinks Swiss Pastry is the man to take us to the Promise Land now that He Who’s Name Shall Not Be Uttered has been shipped off to Greater Peoria. Anybody? Anyone at all? That’s what I thought. So we need a back-up. ConkBloc’s greatest asset in this regard is his relatively tiny…cap hit. Or so I’ve heard.

7: Mark Streit (DIA 4.2 – blood vessels start to expand, flashbacks of Grade 7 gym class...Holy crap! BOOBIES!...begin):

81 of 82 games played, 62 points, 33 on the power play, plays both ways…er…not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not bad for a Kraut chocolate eating neutrality monkey. Plus it will drive the boys from Four Habs Fans batshit.

6: Shean Donovan (DIA 5.2 – face flushes, feel uncontrollable urge to flirt in Irish accent):

Hey look! He’s one of ours! And he wants to stay! Solid veteran presence, does what’s asked of him, doesn’t bitch about it. And really Bryan, we kind of owe him a little somethin’ somethin’ after the way Teflon treated him, know what I’m sayin’?

5: Brooks Orpik (DIA 5.9 – quickened breathing and slight tingling in the area the nice priest called the “vestibules”):

Everything we wanted Wade Redden to be (and may have been for a year or two), but didn’t get, namely a big, mean, stay-at-home defenceman who will punish you severely for the slightest crease infraction. In other words, the exact opposite of the player we just drafted in the first round. What was that Sherry? FINE! I’ll cut the kid some slack. But geez…

Well, that should be enough for both of you to chew on for a while. We’ll be back on Saturday to finish off the list, hoist a pint to our brilliance, and scribble a few more run-on sentences. In the meantime, we’re heading back to the greatest interweb day in the history of the ebays.

Pants! (© FHF)