Doc Holiday

The New Jersey Devils have put veteran forward Brendan Shanahan on waivers to get him off their roster. The 40-year old winger re-signed for one year with the Devils as an unrestricted free agent on August 5 with the intention of playing a 22nd NHL campaign, but reconsidered his plans at the beginning of this month. With 656 goals, Shanahan ranks 11th on the all-time goal-scoring list. A three-time Stanley Cup winner with the Detroit Red Wings, Shanahan signed with the Devils as a free agent midway through last season, and returned to the team where he started his NHL career in 1987. In 34 games for New Jersey last year, Shanahan counted six goals and eight assists.

Hated the Wings ever since they purchased a Stanley Cup back in 2002. I'll never forgive them for that.

No player in the NHL toots their own horn more than Osgood does. What a ******.

Bite me.

I have never liked the Red Wings. Not from the first time I saw them in 1980 when the Norris family was running them into the ground, not after Mike Ilitch bought them and turned them around, not now, not tomorrow, not ever. I have always just plain hated them. As I have said on other boards: if Al Qaeda had a hockey team, and that team were playing the Red Wings, I would be in the stands wearing a burqa and holding a sign saying "GO OSAMA". That is how much I hate them. Respect them? Yes. Like them or be nice to them? HELL NO.

And then there's their WalMart fanbase, who are (in my experience) overwhelmingly the assiest and among the least hockey-knowledgeable fans in the NHL. Sabres fans may be drunk and delusional, but at least when they sober up and the meds kick in one can talk some hockey with them and actually get some cogent discussion going. Wings fans? Fuhgeddaboudit. All the majority of 'em know is "DURRRR GO RED WINGS WE GOTZ CUPZ AND YOU DONT UR JEST JILLUZZ CUZ WE GOT MO FANZ YO DEE DEE DEE JUGGALOZ F4 LYF HA HA HA". They couldn't even recognize Gordie freakin' Howe on the street if he threw an elbow at their heads.

Go ahead Wings mods, give me points for speaking troofz about WingsNation. I don't care. Say it's just because of 2002 and that I didn't even know anything about hockey until that year and that I'm lying about having been a fan of the sport since childhood, if that's what makes your e-peen feel larger. Again, I don't care.

But I will never cheer for the Detroit Red Wings or wish them well, and I would just as soon prefer to ignore the existence of their fanbase (because that's the only thing that keeps me from driving up to the Nexus of Evil errr Joe Louis Arena wearing a backpack nuke and pulling the rip cord).

The only thing I will do--if they win--is congratulate them. Because I do at least have some modicum of class and good manners.