NINE THINGS OVERHEARD AT NHL AND AHL ALL-STAR FESTIVITIES

• “Phil Kessel is sitting in a meeting room at the Opryland Hotel waiting for the player draft. Somebody should tell him.”

• “Who the hell is Leo Komarov? He’s on Toronto? I didn’t even realize they had an NHL team in Toronto.”

• “If Danny Kristo isn’t here, it should be called the AHL Some-of-the-Stars Classic.”

• This is just a little more open ice than there was when Pavelski beat Cornell in ’06.”

• “The people who got John Scott voted into this thing – can we put them in charge of bringing a Frozen Four to Nashville?”

• “They’re not booing Patrick Kane; they’re saying … no, wait, they’re booing. Lots and lots of booing.”

• “Why do people keep throwing spare change at Brent Burns?”

• “Shea Weber broke the record for hardest shot in Nashville, previously held by whatever Johnny Cash was drinking.”

• “I spent the AHL all-star break in Utica last year and Syracuse this year. That’s my ultimate motivation for being ready for camp with the big club in September.”

The Worst Sweaters in Recent History

This update to a popular Napkin from a decade ago that appeared on the old INCH site stemmed from a Twitter comment I made while watching Michigan and Notre Dame last Friday—namely, that the Wolverines’ sweaters that night were alarmingly garish. This rundown includes a few holdovers from 2003 and a handful of new entries. Ironically, the Michigan jersey that sparked this sartorial redux isn’t on the list.

The Holdovers

• Denver’s Goldmember thirds: We named this sweater after the third and final installment in the Austin Powers trilogy. Ten years later, it looks like something Psy would wear.

• Minnesota’s “flag team” jerseys: The Gophers wore these to mark the 75th anniversary of intercollegiate hockey at the school. Instead, they chose to commemorate the worst part of a marching band. Continue reading →

Ten Reasons InsideCollegeHockey.Com Folded

• Maintaining simultaneous bias against 59 Division I teams threatened to cause a rip in the space-time continuum.

• Got in trouble with Apple lawyers when we said we launched in 1976 in Steve Jobs’ garage.

• In retrospect, we shouldn’t have funneled all our money into the Ryan Lochte speaking tour.

• Recent readers surveys show fans eschewed thoughtful, passionate writing about teams, players, and issues in favor of stories about Honey Boo Boo’s recipe for “sketti.”

• Joe Gladziszewski’s side project, AgainstAllThingsJessMyersLikes.com, takes up way too much of his time. (Gladdy: “My Rams!”)

• We’re still waiting for our cut of hockey-related revenue.

• We let it walk halfway across the University of North Dakota campus on a sub-zero winter night.

• Our work was so good, its excellence couldn’t be captured by binary code.

• We couldn’t figure out how to get from Grand Rapids, Mich. to Rochester, N.Y. in less than 30 seconds.

• No more napkin jokes about UNH national titles after they won the … HA! Like that would ever happen.