Happy Festivus! – TMMOTS’ Airing Of NHL Grievances

Today is Festivus – if you don’t know what that means here is some information about the holiday.

Now that we all have the basics down, let’s gather around the aluminum poll and discuss all of the ways that the NHL has let us down in the past year. Here are Too Many Men On The Site’s seven Festivus grievances for 2014.

The Los Angeles Kings – Let’s start things off with the reigning Stanley Cup Champions. Things were cute when the Kings won their first Stanley Cup in 2011 – nothing quite like that first time. But then the Kings had to win their second Stanley Cup in three seasons and people start throwing around phrases like “dynasty” and “best team in hockey”. No LA, what we wanted from you was one Stanley Cup win and then for you to drift back to hockey obscurity – just like the Carolina Hurricanes.

Craig MacTavish – The Edmonton Oilers have been handed first overall picks on a silver-platter on several occasions and yet this team is still a complete dumpster fire. The fact that GM Craig MacTavish just oozes incompetency doesn’t help the situation. This is a guy who holds a press conference to deflect some of the blame from himself, only to make things worse. Oh, and in the same press conference states that firing the head coach won’t solve anything – only to turn around and fire the head coach one week later. It might not be all MacTavish’s fault that the Oilers are so terrible, but he’s currently the captain of this sinking ship, so he get’s the blame in this one.

IceArizona – Thanks for sparing us one off-season of tuning into City Of Glendale council meetings – it was nice not being on Nordiques watch this summer. Still, there was that whole five-year out clause, $50 million of losses part of the deal and now you are trying to sell your majority stake in the team, not exactly a confidence boost. IceArizona was supposed to be the group that would give the Phoenix market a fair try and not even one year in they are already trying to flip the team. That’s the type of crap I pull on eBay when trying to sell my iPad – “sure, I love it! Couldn’t live without it!” (as I try to sell it to the highest bidder).

Martin Brodeur – The Brodeur farewell tour during the 2013-14 season would have been a great sendoff for Brodeur. Instead he decided to go all Brett Favre on us this season and put on the pads for the St. Louis Blues. While things got off to an okay start (let’s face, expectations were low), Brodeur is currently sitting at a .882 SV% and a 3.59 GAA. You should have stayed retired as a Devil Marty.

Slava Voynov – First, you are a terrible human being. However, if one good thing could be said about this terrible situation is that you opened the eyes of NHL fans and reminded us that domestic violence isn’t just an NFL thing – it can happen in any league. Hockey players are human beings and there are bound to be a few bad apples in the bunch. You sir are one of them. Enjoy the KHL, since that’s about the only league that will probably let you play (possible time in the slammer aside), but the last time I checked they’re kind of bankrupt.

Hideous Jerseys – The Buffalo Sabres alternate, the Los Angeles Kings Stadium Series uniform, those chrome logos from last season, the black and lime green jerseys that are rumored for the Columbus All-Star Game. Whomever is making these uniform decisions, please get your eye prescription checked and please stop producing uniforms for the NHL.

Toronto Maple Leafs Fans – Has there been a whinier bunch of fans so far this season? Throwing jerseys on the ice one month in? Perhaps in Edmonton that would be acceptable, but the Leafs aren’t that bad. Sure 1967 was a long, long, long time ago but Maple Leafs fan act like their team is a complete dumpster fire. I think Leafs fans and Oilers fans need to trade places for a day – I really think the Oilers fans could use a break and the Leafs fans should see what a real bad team with no direction actually looks like.