Ice Cold Takes: FanSided 250, Star Wars, Carter Hart has entered the chat

Ice Cold Takes is a weekly humor column focused on what is trending around the NHL. It’s an 82-game season, we aren’t going to go 80-3 or whatever.

That was a quote from Boston Bruins forward Brett Ritchie, who clearly wasn’t paying attention in math class. This is one of those moments you just have to laugh about. Ritchie was mocked relentlessly by NHL Twitter, analysts and teammates, all in good fun, of course. If he hadn’t said 82 game season before 80-3, he might have gotten less heat, but here we are.

Ritchie’s Bruins have been struggling as of late, capping off a tough road trip with their fifth straight loss. The team doesn’t seem too concerned, though. The point Ritchie was trying to make was that it is a long season. Despite the skid, they’re still second in the league in points, so everyone relax. The Stanley Cup isn’t won in December, just ask the St. Louis Blues.

The Bruins blew off some steam at a recent practice, with Tuukka Rask showing shades of his past anger. Let’s compare it to the good old days.

https://twitter.com/Sportsnet/status/1204481614836850691

Ravens TE Hayden Hurst: Hockey guy

Baltimore Ravens tight end Hayden Hurst jumped into the “boards” after scoring a 61-yard touchdown at New Era Field in Buffalo during last Sunday’s game against the Bills. In doing so, he went helmet-to-head with an unsuspecting fan.

“Had to get my crash into the boards hockey celly because I’m a #HockeyGuy” he tweeted following the game, along with a message to the fan he concussed, who will now likely be getting a pretty sweet Christmas present from Hurst. Good to know there are some NFLers who appreciate true toughness!

Jack Eichel

Speaking of Buffalo, the home town Sabres are red hot, riding a three-game winning streak into second in the Atlantic Division. Part of the reason they’ve been hot is because of Eichel’s 15-game point streak, which is made easier when opposing defenders give you a little too much space, like this:

More like “Snack” Eichel, because this guy is looking fiiiiiiine. Kind of an embarrassing moment for the Blues, here. It’s hard to justify leaving the best player on the ice that open. Talk about hanging your goalie out to dry.

Poor Jake Allen didn’t stand much of a chance here, but in fairness, no one has stood much of a chance against Eichel as of late. At least the Blues players had the pass option covered, right?

Carter Hart

Question: How many saves of the year can we have in one year? Answer: Currently three. Hart joined Marc-Andre Fleury and Tuukka Rask with this phenomenal glove save on Wednesday night.

https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1204983395152998401

Ridiculous. Here’s a completely unrelated, nonsensical and unanswerable question: Could Wayne Gretzky, at his current age, score an NHL goal? For fun, let’s say he gets signed to a team for the year. At 85 years old, does he find the back of the net once before the season ends?

FanSided 250 rankings

Earlier this week, FanSided released their FanSided 250 fandom rankings. If you aren’t familiar with the list, it’s the ultimate ranking of fandoms in sports, entertainment, celebrities and gaming. You can check out the full rankings by CLICKING THIS LINK (do it).

The NHL had a strong showing on FanSided’s list of this year’s top fandoms. The St. Louis Blues took the top rank in respect to the NHL, sitting 31st overall on the list. This makes sense, given the incredible run they went on last year (yeah, we can talk about it now). The Toronto Maple Leafs were second in NHL rankings (59th overall), with the Boston Bruins rounding out the top three (88th overall).

Here’s what to make of this: Toronto Maple Leafs fans are basically subs, with their team acting as the ultimate sports dominatrix. No one takes this much of a beating and keeps coming back for more unless they are into that kind of thing. And hey, we don’t kink shame here! You do you, Leafs fans. The rest of us are happy to continue providing the beatings.

Stick to sports

I know this is a hockey column, but I can’t ignore this very serious problem. I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here, but I saved this for the end so if you don’t want to hear about Baby Yoda and/or only care about hockey, bail now for the NHL section to read something that’s actually intelligently written about the NHL. If you’re still with me, time to get big mad.

You don’t have to be a fan of The Mandalorian to fall in love with adorable Baby Yoda. He’s quite possibly the cutest fictional character of all time. These toys are amazing. Every kid (and some adults, probably) are going to love these. He’s going to be a hit at Christmas time, right? WRONG.

These toys come out “sometime in 2020.” Excuse me? NO DISNEY CHARACTER IN HISTORY HAS BEEN MARKETED WORSE THAN BABY YODA. It fills me with rage. Baby Yoda is massive. Every kid on Earth is asking for these toys. Unfortunately, the good folks over at Disney, or Hasbro, or whoever I am supposed to blame for this, didn’t seem to think that making these available for the holiday season was a good idea. Whoever made that decision should be fired faster than a 2019 NHL coach on a losing team.

The only items currently available on the Disney store website are t-shirts and mugs. Great. Let me just grab a coffee mug for my four-year-old nephew. He’ll love that. His day doesn’t start until he has his morning coffee! My niece will look great in her new baby Yoda t-shirt, and we all know how much kids love getting clothes for the holidays!

Parents, I guess you’ll have to tell your kids that Santa and his lazy-ass elves didn’t have time to whip up a batch of Baby Yoda merch before Christmas. who knows, maybe he hasn’t subscribed to Disney+ yet.

How are we going to tie all this Star Wars talk back into hockey? Like this:

Keith Yandle the toothless storm trooper

As cool as Yandle looks, I think this means he’s going to miss every shot.

Keep your head up.