Healthy New York hockey fans choose the Islanders

From our friends over at Copper & Blue comes this find at ESPN: A list of vendor inspection reports for North America's major sports venues. (Update: You may have seen this at Puck Daddy, too.)

If the official reports and ESPN's culling can be believed -- and who am I to ever tell you to doubt bureaucrats or ESPN? -- here is what was found at Madison Square Garden, home of those one-Oiler-fed-Cup-since-1940 Short Island Smurfs:

Vendors with critical violations: 61%

Inspection report excerpt: At one stand, inspectors found "53 mouse excreta" (38 on top of a metal box underneath the cash registers in the front food-prep/service area and 15 on top of a carbonated-beverage dispensing unit).

...and here is what was found at Nassau Coliseum, the glorious, perfectly flawless and totally not-needing-replacement-at-all-no-sir-now-please-mind-that-roof home of your four-Cups-since-1980 New York Islanders:

Vendors with critical violations: 0%

Inspection report excerpt: No critical or major violations.

For what it's worth, Newark's [washed up fashion brand] Center was dinged for "a seemingly spoiled and 'odorous can of cherry ice cream topping," while Buffalo's [Scottish finance of some sort] Arena had 8% of vendors with violations, the most notable being "two critical violations for having a toxic chemical in an unlabeled spray bottle."

Needless to say, in Islanders country all of our toxic chemicals are properly labeled, and our cans of cherry ice cream topping are rarely odorous in a spoiled sort of way. So remember, ye NY-area children still picking your favorite hockey side: A Vote for the Isles is a Vote Against Mouse Excreta! If you choose the Rangers, then the mice have already won.