Celebrate The Birth Of Our Nation By Blowing Up A Small Part Of It!

Happy Canadia Day, fellow Hosers and Hosettes! In about an hour, old white guys will start throwing obscene amounts of money at virile young men, in the (mostly vain) hopes that one of them will agree to a long term relationship based strictly on love and mutual respect. But enough about Taiwan. It's Free Agent Day people!

I realize I failed to fulfill my promise of finishing off my "top ten" wish list. As I'm sure both of you were devastated and spent the weekend searching for other reasons to live, please allow me to apologize and assure you that such unacceptable laziness on the part of your humble scribe will, in all probability, happen on a fairly regular basis until the puck drops in October. Hey, it's a long weekend, it finally stopped raining and I had a fridge full of beer. That, and trying to find four more ways to describe Degrees of Inappropriate Arousal without the use of pictures and/or flow charts was fucking exhausting.

If you're curious (and I know you are), the rest of my list went as follows:

• #4) Cory Stillman (solid second liner we so desperately need).
  
• #3) Ryan Malone (Tampa? $31.5M?? You are dead to me).
• #2) Brian Campbell (can't afford him, but it's fun to dream, ain't it?).
  
• And the number one Free Agent I Would Love To See In The Condom Logo next year...Mats Sundin. Too bad his rumoured existence is largely fictional (like fairies, leprechauns and eskimos). Don't tell Gainey though. It's fun to watch him go traipsing through the wilds of Sweden hoping for a sighting (OMG!! They...EXCHNGED EMILS!!111!! /Fanhouse'd).

As for viewing the festivities, your best bet is to stay with Sportsnet, who have vowed to "break into regular programming" (which I believe will consist of poker and competitive tongue piercing) to bring us any big deals.

As for the bright lights controlling the Toronto Sports Network, it would appear that they are loathe to repeat last year's experience whence, due to a lack of action, we were treated to four hours of Duthy and Millbury bitching about each other's hair. Add that to the fact that Fletcher pretty much shot his load at the draft (there's a visual for you, kids!), and you won't see or hear a word on TSN until they do a wrap up show at five this afternoon.

Or, you can stay tuned right here! Through the magic of dial up interweb, I fully intend to shirk my domestic duties and wear out the F5 key refreshing NHL.com, TSN.ca and Sportsnet in order to bring you both the absolute latest in UFA news, while simultaneously surfing for porn. No need to thank me. That's just the way I roll.

Gentlemen, start your chequebooks.

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)

Happy Free Agent Day Canada! Please Spend Responsibly.

In its continuing effort to prove to Canadians that the NHL does in fact care for and value its largest and most loyal fan base, Gary's Gang has bestowed upon us, the Canadian fan, a great gift.

When gazing across the desolate moonscape that is the off-season calendar, it was decided by those Wise Men in New York that the annual livestock auction known as "The Opening Of Free Agency" would be held on a day when Canadian's attentions would not be distracted by superfluous events. In no way would external influences be allowed to tear us away from our blogs, our internets, our radios or our television sets. "Allow their full attentions to be paid to this, the eighth or ninth most important day of our season!", they cried. "Maximize the hype and spin. Wall-to-wall coverage! Show them we love them!" the marketroaches added. And lo, it came to pass that a day that rivals the trade deadline for Canadian water cooler talk and navel gazing shall be fixed on...a Sunday afternoon. A Sunday afternoon that was also July 1st. Canada Day.

So thanks guys. We could not have received a more thoughtful gift for our Nation's 140th birthday than to be forced to choose between a beautiful long week-end outdoors with our fellow countrymen and being yelled at by Pierre McGuire.

As for me, the cooler is packed, the steaks are marinating and the margaritas are blending. If you're lucky Gary, the folks now out on my back deck might, might talk a little hockey at some point between the fourth bottle of Cave Springs 2005 semi-dry Riesling and the fireworks show down on the waterfront. Maybe. Then again, tomorrow is a stat holiday too.

Happy Canada Day everyone!