A hockey story to be truly thankful for this Thanksgiving

Ice Cold Takes is a humor column covering what is trending around the NHL. The official column of NOT panicking about your hockey team in November. NOT PANICKING.

Beat to an absolute pulp, hurting everywhere and lacking any sort of defense. The Boston Bruins are Rocky Balboa during his first fight in Rocky III. For those of you who might not have seen the films, in Rocky III, Balboa gets absolutely destroyed against a mean, massive beast named Clubber Lang (Mr. T). To further strengthen my analogy, Rocky even wore Bruins colors in that fight.

The B’s best player, Patrice Bergeron, most of their defensemen (though they get a couple of them back soon) and multiple other nagging issues has this team one of the most injured in the NHL. But like Rocky Balboa, they are down, not out. They will come back stronger because of all this, just like Rocky did when he came back to defeat Lang at the end of Rocky III (it’s been 36 years, this no longer counts as a spoiler).

Injuries are nothing new for the Bruins. This happened last year as well (almost eerily similar, excluding the time of year). Young players will be forced to step up and play bigger roles, everyone will get healthy and the Bruins will be a better team come April.

Yes. I know that Rocky is from Philly, shut up. Here’s some more positive stuff after that self-assuring opening bit that I needed to put in writing to feel better.

Trending Up

1. The Penguins fan in need of a new kidney

If you are a Pittsburgh Penguins fan or someone who, for some strange reason, has read this column since last April, you might remember the Pens fan who brought a very different sign to a game (Scroll to the bottom of this column from April for the background story).

Kelly Sowatsky, a 31-year-old school teacher, was in desperate need of a kidney transplant. She and her fiancé (huge Penguins fans) came up with a very interesting way of getting her the help she needed.

After being picked up by the Penguins social media account, the story went viral. Eventually, Jeff Lynd from Delaware came to be Kelly’s savior. Lynd, a fellow school teacher-turned-hero, broke it down in hockey terms: “If Mario Lemieux didn’t save the [Penguins] then none of us would be here.”

Hockey fans are the greatest sports fans on Earth. Incredible.

2. Hockey Pranks

Nothing beats a good prank, right? We’ve seen Sidney Crosby and Marc André Fleury go at it in the locker rooms, the commercial with Alex Ovechkin and plenty more, most including Fleury in some way, around the NHL.

As good as some of these are, the real pranksters are in the beer leagues. Check out this collection of great tricks played on this one poor guy who is just trying to play some hockey. This is what happens when you’re the guy who picks number “69” on the rec team.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqbCEnchJo2/

These are all great. The bluetooth speaker is a creative, modern prank that can be used in all walks of life (under a coworkers desk, in a friend’s house/car, tucked behind a ceiling tile in class, etc). The Tabasco sauce in the water bottle, while mean, will be happening to my brother the next time we play sports together.

3. Joel Quenneville 

The recently fired Chicago Blackhawks head coach isn’t letting unemployment get him down one bit. On Sunday, he was out tailgating with Chicago Bears fans, living his absolute best life.

A shotski with the boys! It looks like coach Q still loves the Chicago fans, and that the city still loves him. The man looks great in a toque, doesn’t he? There’s no denying this. Let’ hope he picks a cold-weather city to coach in next (It snows in Philly, right?).

At this point, Quenneville is only unemployed because he chooses to be, as he likely would have gotten six or seven calls the night of his firing. There’s a good chance he has a team in mind and will take in a few more Bears games during his well-deserved vacation time.

Trending down

1. Keith Yandle 

Keithe Yandle is a stud. He’s an all-time great player, leader and person. But the internet is undefeated and NHL production crews are getting younger and therefore more in-touch with what’s available to them for trolling purposes.

BOOM! Roasted. Well done New York Rangers arena staff. This is an all-time great use of a Family Guy clip during a game. One that they were specifically saving for this game against Yandle’s Panthers. High Fives all-around. Giggity.

2. Regular passing 

Regular stick-to-stick, on-ice passing is so 2015. Alley-oops are all the rage in today’s NHL. Get used to seeing these, because they are a big part of the future of the game.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqPicuiB55X/

Now these passes have been around for a while, but players are currently better than ever at attempting them. There’s one particular pass that brought these to the mainstream. It happened during a playoff game involving the Ottawa Senators and Boston Bruins. That is all I will say about it, because it still haunts my dreams.

3. NHL coaches

Good lord there have been some firings lately. The L.A. Kings kicked things off by firing John Stevens earlier this month. Then came Joel Quenneville in Chicago. St. Louis and Edmonton followed suit, firing head coaches Mike Yeo and Todd McLellan respectively.

While most of these coaches were underachieving with their supposedly good teams, there’s one astoundingly stubborn piece of the puzzle that just doesn’t seem to fit, but remains in place anyway. Peter Chiarelli.

Edmonton’s move makes sense. They’ve been gifted the first round pick in almost every draft since 2010 and save one season, have been abysmal. McLellan just wasn’t cutting it and it was time for a change. Chiarelli, though, has a long history of trading away star players for minimal returns and is most definitely sitting on the hottest seat in the cold-ass city of Edmonton right now.

Firing McLellan was the ultimate GM move. In doing so, he’s bought himself more time. More time to trade away more young stars like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (who he’s shopped around before) or Leon Draisaitl.

Be careful, Edmonton. Like a rabid raccoon, Chiarelli is backed into a corner. And a Peter Chiarelli backed into a corner is the most dangerous kind of Peter Chiarelli.

Betting with Bruin (5-7)

Back in the win column after last week! In this special American Thanksgiving edition of ICT, let’s earn back some of the money you spent betting on today’s football games. Remember that a bunch of today’s NHL games are on early!

Lock: Predators -1.5 over Blues (+235) – Nashville is ridiculously good right now. Probably the best in the league. Don’t expect Thursday’s turkey feast to slow them down as they visit St. Louis on Friday evening. Take the puck line in this game for some extra cash, as the Preds just beat the Blues 4-1 on Wednesday. This game should be the gravy on top of a successful betting day.

Upset: Rangers (+130) to beat Flyers – The Flyers are once again riding the merry-go-round of goaltenders this season. They’re supposed to be good, but until they get their goaltending situation under control, they are usually safe to bet against.

Keep your head up.

Odds presented by Oddsshark.