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NBC hockey analyst and interviewer Pierre McGuire is a font of hockey knowledge and has earned a veritable army corps of dedicated fans because of it.
However, McGuire will not be in his designated post behind the glass tonight during the nationally televised game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Islanders. McGuire instead will be working Wednesday's Blackhawks-Wild game. The schedule change must have been very difficult for McGuire, whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for the talent-laden and high-profile Penguins can come off as overbearing to the point of making him appear as a walking, talking, hairless extension of their media guide*.
*McGuire was a Penguins scout and assistant coach during their early '90s Cups. Oh, has he mentioned this before?
Since the Islanders appear on national TV about as often as the Yule Log, McGuire was expected to do some serious homework to gather his usual amount of esoteric facts for a team he doesn't know that well. Sadly, we won't get to hear them tonight.
But we at Lighthouse Hockey simply couldn't wait to find out what McGuire was going to say about the Islanders. So, using some high-tech computer hacking equipment, we have intercepted the spreadsheet he was preparing for the game and have printed it here. As usual, it's a mix of the interesting, the idiotic and the very, very intimate.
| HOCKEY PLAYER | NO. | JUNIOR OR COLLEGE TEAM | HOCKEY PLAYER NOTES |
| John Tavares | 91 | Oshawa Generals/London Knights | MONSTER lacrosse player! Can fling a ball into an empty soup can at 100 yards. |
| Matthew Moulson | 26 | Cornell | Once used a trigonometry textbook that had previously belonged to Joe Nieuwendyk |
| Casey Cizikas | 53 | Mississauga St. Michael's Majors | MONSTER forechecker! Even blocked me from taking an apple out of the Islanders locker room this morning. |
| Kyle Okposo | 21 | Minnesota | If the MONSTER version of Okposo shows up, call him a MONSTER. If he doesn't, call him a "special player." |
| Keith Aucoin | 10 | Norwich University | Played for teams called the Everblades, River Kings and Lock Monsters which I'm pretty sure are all fictional creatures. |
| David Ullström | 41 | HV71 Swedish Elite League | Out of Jönköping, the 9th-most populous city in Sweden. His name has an umlaut which is a phonological phenomenon of shifting sounds that's German in origin. If you leave it off, the letter has a TOTALLY different sound and can cause confusion among native speakers. |
| Travis Hamonic | 3 | Moose Jaw Warriors/Brandon Wheat Kings | Out with an ankle injury. NOTE: Ask Edzo about the ankle he injured playing hackeysack in the pressbox during the Rangers' 1994 Stanley Cup run. |
| Andrew MacDonald | 47 | Moncton Wildcats | Out of Judique, Nova Scotia. (Be sure to pronounce "Judique" with extra flair.) Played in Moncton with Keith Yandle. Has a $550,000/year contract that includes room and board at Nassau Coliseum. |
| Thomas Alva Hickey | 14 | Seattle Thunderbirds | Captain of the 2009 Canadian World Junior team. Fourth overall draft pick by the Los Angeles Kings. Spent four years at Manchester of the AHL. Picked up on waivers by the Islanders. Just got a GREAT haircut. |
| Matthew Carkner | 7 | Peterborough Petes | Turned down opportunities to be basketball player, a volleyball player and a ladder for the Windsor, Ontario Fire Department. |
| Josephus Finley | 52 | North Dakota | At 6 foot, 8 inches, A TRUE MONSTER! Skates like Frankenstein, breath like Godzilla, sucks like Dracula. |
| FOR EVERYBODY ELSE: Ask them what it's like to play against Sidney Crosby, Kristophffer Letang and these Pittsburgh Penguins. | |||
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This is a parody. No one hacked Pierre's computer. Because IT'S IN HIS MIND!