By Sean Gallagher
In a move that we at Game Time can only find to be enterprising and inspiring, some youngsters who play for the Lockview High Dragons hockey team published an unofficial program that was handed out to attendees of one of their late-season games.
Now, we're pretty sure that Game Time is the only unofficial program created for any of the 30 NHL teams, and while we love doing it, as unprofitable and normal-relationship damaging as it is, we cannot fathom recreating the effort for a high school team. Of course, Lockview High is in Canada, so all bets are off when it comes to hockey. Hell, those bastards are probably turning an actual profit.
But the fact of the matter is that, hockey hotbed or not, the folks who attend Lockview High games aren't quite ready for the same level of mature content that you might find in an average copy of St. Louis Game Time. Then again, we're typically talking about grown-ass people and not kids who just started learning how to drive (David Perron excluded).
In Lockview, for instance, parents attending the game who received copies of the unofficial program were shocked (SHOCKED!) to learn that high school boys who play hockey might make jokes like one player's profile that said he enjoyed, "some meat between his buns" or that another might actually understand the double entendre of saying that he likes to hunt and that he keeps a "large weapon" on him.
To all of this we say, nice work, boys. If any of you are looking for a non-paying job making fun of NHL players, fire us an email.
Sure, they never should have handed out their particular brand of sophmoric hilarity (though we bet it was more seniors than sophmores who contributed) to every Tom, Dick and Harry's mom who walked into the game (shit, boys, that's worth at least $4), but they were just having fun and being kind of junior achievers about the normal banter that occurs in a locker room. Hell, they probably tamed it down a bunch compared to what they say in their locker room.
The unfortunate downside of the smartassy DIY unofficial hockey game day guide to Longview High School hockey program is that some Harry's mom got offended. And if anyone out there has seen the South Park movie, you all know what can happen when you offend a suburban hockey mom.
Sure enough, after a 'concerned' parent took the program to the school district, the hockey coach lost his job. Ostensibly because he should have monitored and filtered out any offensive material, the team's volunteer coach was fired from his post for not proofreading the material.
Can you really fire a guy from a volunteer position for not proofreading a non-coaching related piece of pseudo-hilarity? As Kramer once said, "I don't even really work here."
Hell, the guy was probably too busy trying to coach his team or prepare a game plan or, oh I don't know, work a paying job on top of trying to donate his free time to mentor some hockey kids at the local high school, to proofread the smartass musings of a bunch of hormone-raging teenagers.
Regardless, Kevin Brown is out of a job, Lockview's hockey season is over, their unofficial program is dead, and Game Time still has no competition in the market of smartassy hockey programs.
So, there's a downside and an upside for us.
(we owe a tip of the hat to our friend and guru of all things hockihilarity, Greg Wyshysnski of the AOL Fanhouse for uncovering this little bit of meat stuck between the buns of the hockey world.)