hamster hockey
My first attempt at picking the team was with darts. My premise was that with this year's NHL salary cap and all the trading going on, it's so hard to tell who's who that if you were to pick a team at the beginning of the season to bet on winning the Stanley Cup (as we do in our little hockey club, The Gentleman's Beer Drinking Club), you may as well throw a dart at a list of teams. Which I did. I threw darts at a piece of paper, with every team listed on it, taped to my dartboard. The first dart I threw ended up piercing "Columbus Blue Jackets."
My first reaction was, "Not likely." But given that the last three years have seen some very unlikely teams entering the Stanley Cup finals, it's possible. And given the fact the league is virtually wide open right now, it's very possible. My dart experiment, however, was generally poo pooed as "poorly executed." The key word is "poo poo."
So based on a Canadian experiment a couple years ago in which they used a monkey to determine who would win the Stanley Cup, I decided to enlist the help of Tania and I's two newest pets: Tito and Cheeto. They are not monkeys. They are dwarf hamsters. They are very cute. Although Tito is "the dude" in their little house (or "The Burrito," as we call their abode), they are both females. When Tito is not trying to bite you, she is cute.
Tito and Cheeto race around our living room hamster race track while Gary tries to decide which one to eat first.
While the results of the Canadian monkey experiment were very interesting, I don't think it was a very reliable study in animal hockey intuition. "Maggie the Monkey" was presented with a wheel at the beginning of the 2003 NHL playoffs with the logos of two teams on it, Detroit and Anaheim. Maggie spun the wheel and it landed on "Ducks." And then the Ducks, to the surprise of everyone, won. They repeated the wheel spinning thing in the next round when the Ducks took on the Dallas Stars. Again the wheel landed on "Ducks" and the Ducks, again surprisingly, won. And on and on. Ducks, Ducks, Ducks. Good monkey. Not very impressive however. For one thing, the monkey had a 50/50 chance each time, and secondly the Ducks lost in the finals. So I say fuck that monkey. Actually, I love monkeys, so I should say fuck the Canadians that made that monkey do that stupid trick. Bad Canadians, bad!
Unlike Maggie the Monkey, Tito and Cheeto didn't have the benefit of being able to watch the entire 2005-6 regular season to base their predictions upon. Nor is their range narrowed to just two teams. No, I made the hamsters pick which one of the 30 NHL teams was going to win the Stanley Cup before the season even began. Blind! (Well, actually they weren't physically blinded. I would have liked them to have been blind, but I couldn't get the tiny little blindfold around Tito's eyes because they're right by her fucking mouth which has really sharp little teeth in it...fuckin' bitch.)
Both Tito and Cheeto were placed (separately) into a shoebox, the floor of which was lined with a printout of 30 squares of equal size. Each square had a NHL team printed in the corner. Before I placed each hamster in the box I would ask, "Who do you think is going to win the Stanley Cup this year? No, don't tell me!" I'd put a little finger up to their mouths, shhhhh! But not too close. Those teeth. "No," I'd say, "don't say it out loud. I want you to go into the box and run around for a little while, think about what I'm asking you, and then shit on the square of the team you think is going to win the Stanley Cup."
"Okay!" Tito seemed to squeak.
I placed Tito in the box and, as I had instructed, she ran around all crazy. Zoom! Zoom! Back and forth, back and forth. She put a lot of thought into it. She was thinking so hard it made her go berserker. She tried to climb out even. A bunch of times.
The pressure was too much for Tito as she tries to escape her duties.
"No," I said, "not until you poop and show me who you think is going to win the Stanley Cup." It's a tough question. I had to keep poking her back in with a stick.
She finally resigned herself to a decision and took a shit on the team she thought would win this year's Stanley Cup. She pooped in the square marked "ANA": Anaheim.
Tito chooses Anaheim.
"The Ducks?" I yelled. You'll remember Maggie picked The Ducks as well. I fucking hate The Ducks. "What is it with you fucking animals and The Ducks?"
I know there's no team called "The Hamsters" (there should be), but if it's an allegiance to animals sort of thing, there's the Bruins. They're bears. Or what about the Panthers? Blue Jackets? Coyotes? Sharks? Oh and the Penguins! They're way, WAY cuter than ducks. Have you seen March of the Penguins? Oh. My. God. And then there's the Wild! There's a team named after all of untamed nature for shit's sake. What the fuck is it with the lowly ducks? Fuck The Ducks! Anyway, I think when I yelled at Tito she got scared and wanted to change her mind because then she took a shit on "NYI": The Islanders.
"No, I mean, the Islanders!" she seemed to say. "PFFFFFT!"
"Nope, you said Ducks," I said. (Speaking of ducks, I hear something quackin'!) This is science after all. One cannot ignore the results no matter how much you dislike them. Thus, Tito chose The Ducks. So I took Tito out of the shoebox, cleaned up her little poops and replaced her with Cheeto. "I want you to go into the box and run around for a little while, and then shit on the square of the team you think is going to win the Stanley Cup."
Cheeto thought about it a lot longer than Tito. Cheeto also ran around even faster. That's because Cheeto works out in the hamster wheel all night long and runs hamster marathons.
Cheeto also wasn't interested in using her fortune telling talents. "Let me out!"
"Do you want some coffee?" I asked. She was running around frantically, but didn't seem to be making any kind of movement towards a decision. "Or a cigarette?" Nope. She just ran back and forth, back and forth. I sat down and watched TV for a couple minutes. When I got back up to check on her, she had pooped! But she hadn't made a decision. The turd was hanging from her ass fur.
"Oh wow!" I said. "Where you going to put that?" She couldn't decide. She was looking at the St. Louis Blues for awhile. But she ended up dropping it on the border of Montreal and Edmonton. "Just like a chick," I thought, "can't make up her mind."
Tough call: Edmonton or Montreal?
I called Tania over for a ruling. "Is that on Montreal or Edmonton's side?" I asked.
"It's totally on the Montreal side," she said. She was right. The majority of the tiny turd was on the Habs side of the line.
I also happen to hate the Canadiens.
"THE CANADIENS?" I yelled, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO?" I threw Cheeto violently into the back wall of her cage. "GODDAM YOU CHEETO! GODDAM YOU TO HELL!"
(No hamsters were harmed in this experiment, incidentally. I was, though. Fucking Tito bit my finger and drew blood. "Give blood, play hamster hockey.")
So there you have it: Tito and Cheeto have picked, respectively, Anaheim or Montreal to win the cup. Both teams do have a shot at it, and, interestingly, they could, feasibly, play each other in the finals. Before I start making any bets in Vegas, though, I'm going to wait this season out and see how their predictions pan out. I don't trust the prophetic powers of hamsters just yet. Perhaps you do? Well be my guest. And good luck.
If one of them is right, I'll be overjoyed that I have a goose that lays the golden (brown) egg and I'll certainly be acting upon her "advice" at the beginning of next season. I might even start consulting the hamster oracle with all kinds of questions. "Who will win the Super Bowl?" "The World Series?" "Which one of these company's stocks looks good to you?" Ah, to see the future through a hamster's butthole, that would be amazing.
But I hope to God they're wrong. I don't think they could have shit on two teams that I hate more. Fuck the Habs. Fuck The Ducks.
