Cupcakes

The quiet, hot days of summer summon strange conversations and stories in the hockey world, allowing the fan to ponder things that wouldn't get a fraction of a seconds attention during the busy season.

And so it has come to this.

Cupcakes.

If you at all follow the blog Puck Daddy, no doubt you've heard the quirky story of a lady beating the odds and getting her homemade cupcakes past the iron fence of modern day sports concessions and into the dilapidated Nassau Coliseum in Long Island for Islanders games this upcoming season.

Who cares right?

Well, we here at Black Aces do. Not really, but the marriage of cupcakes and NHL hockey have given rise to a mass of Tweeters coming up with their own cupcake jokes, some of which, below, were posted on Puck Daddy:

#nhlcupcakes

Greg's post Thursday about the New York Islanders cupcakes sparked a bit of a to-do on Twitter. The jokes obviously came rollin' in, and made it an odd trending topic for a bit of the late morning.

Some of the better ones:

@DaveLozo: "The Sidney Crosby Cupcake — it doesn't matter if you like it, it's getting crammed down your throat."

@blogesalming: "The Eklund Cupcake: Convinces you you're eating a cupcake and turns out to be urinal cake"

@DownGoesBrown: "The LA Kings cupcake: Fans love it, but don't understand how the icing works."

@psykovike: "Calgary Flames Cupcake... The 'baker' doesn't give a damn if you like it or not... What do you know about cupcakes..."

@radioactivesmrf: "The Chris Mason Cupcake, it's better than it looks. It would have to be..."

@Kevin_Singer: "The Dany Heatley cupcake: demands to be made at another bakery because current one isn't putting it on the right shelf"

And the winner...

@dear_gravity: "The Phil Kessel cupcake: has one nut inside."

Pretty good stuff there (well, the Kessel one was a little much maybe).

But over a particularly long day at work, I started swapping cupcakes with our pal Blood Red Army, and soon the shelves were overflowing with ideas. I thought, what the hell, it's summer. I can do an entire post about cupcakes. So here's what we came up with during our Friday sun-addled afternoon, mostly Senators related and BRA's epic blast at Luongo included.

Enjoy (or don't). We did.


Blood Red Army: The Alexie Kovalev: If you're not careful, it'll disappear before you even get it in your mouth.

Black Aces: The Filip Kuba: No one even noticed it was gone from the bakery shelf.

Blood Red Army: The Rick Dipietro: You'll still be paying for it in 12 years.

Black Aces: The Jonathan Cheechoo: Like fruitcake, whatever appeal it had faded a long time ago.

Blood Red Army: The Jason Spezza: He'll make you sick as he passes backwards through you.

Black Aces: The Jacques Martin: Sugar free, tasteless and bland, but good for you.

Blood Red Army: The Joe Corvo: Will request to be moved to a Duncan Donuts or other generic store.

Black Aces: The Bryan Murray: So sour it makths you talkth lithke thisth.

Blood Red Army:  The Ray Emery: It's chocolate with a white, snowy-frosting.  (Ed.'s Note: Allegedly)

Black Aces: The Martin Gerber: Stank so bad they had to shut the bakery early in 2009.

Blood Red Army: The Roberto Luongo: Decent, but overrated and extra greasy.

Black Aces: The Zdeno Chara: WAY too much yeast.

Blood Red Army: The Erik Karlsson: So slick it'll pass through you before you can even say number 2.

Black Aces: The Cody Bass: Fell through the crack on the bakers shelf and left to rot.

Blood Red Army: The Jarkko Ruutu: Bite in quick before it bites you.

Black Aces: The John Paddock: You get three quarters through it and end up throwing it in the trash.

Blood Red Army: The Bill Muckalt: A year later you'll still be wondering what happened.

Black Aces: The Mike Comrie: Don't buy or sell - the recipe was fucked to begin with.

Blood Red Army: The Don Cherry: Warning - must be split open to allow hot air to escape before eating.

Black Aces: The AlexeiYashin: You can't afford it.

Blood Red Army: The Chris Chelios: You just can't get it to stay down.

Black Aces: The Anton Volchenkov: Shot so full of raisins you wonder how it stays together.

Blood Red Army: The Wade Redden: Slowly rotted from too much sugar. (Ed.'s note: Allegedly)


And a few more for good measure from Black Aces who evidently had more time to kill than BRA.

The Chris Neil: Free tooth inside every one.

The Matt Carkner: Who knew people would like a molasses cupcake so much?

The Andy Sutton: Leaves the experts confused - is it good or is it just another cupcake?

The John Muckler: White icing, full of bones and smells funny.

The Dany Heatley: Smells like chicken, tastes like chickenshit.

Penguins Shill For Wheels

For bad acting, it's hard to top these four Penguins who ham it up for a local car dealership. Colby Armstrong, Maxime Talbot, Sergei Gonchar and Evgeni Malkin are all in it (I would have loved to seen Georges Laraque as well). The weird thing is, all four are still better actors than Keanu Reeves.

(The video is dark for a few seconds at the start)

The Gutter Bin Presents ... More Classic Quotes

We haven't done these for awhile here at Black Aces but here we go with another soul-sucking edition of the most ridiculous, offensive, or abysmally moronic comments by all our favourite NHL talking heads over the years.

Since a lot of people are comparing the Richard Peddie-run Maple Leafs to the Harold Ballard years, let's start off with the man himself, the always foolish, and often racist and sexist Harold Ballard. Be sure to check out previous editions of Classic Quotes by clicking on the tag at the bottom of the post.

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"Diabetes is all in the mind."
- Ballard speaking on his own diabetic condition to Brian McFarlane.

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"People criticize Gerry McNamara. They say he's brain damaged. But there isn't a guy in hockey who isn't."

- Ballard comes to the defence of Leaf GM McNamara after the disastrous 84-85 season when the Leafs finished dead last in the NHL.

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"Women are good for only one thing - lying on their backs."-Harold Ballard, in a candid moment, speaking to female journalist Barbara Frum.

.."If you can call a Chevrolet a Chev, why can't you call a Japanese a Jap?"
- Harold Ballard talks about race relations with Ottawa writer Earl McRae in the '80s.

"Aw, what does he know?"
- Don Cherry, referring to Howie Meeker. Cherry played one NHL game while Meeker played for eight years and was a four-time Stanley Cup winner with the Leafs.

"A Finn coaching pros? And what's his name - Alpo? Sounds like a dog food."- Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada commenting on the Winnipeg Jets hiring Alpo Suhonen from Finland to coach their American League farm team in the '80s.

“Have another donut, you fat pig!”
- Jim Schoenfeld, coach of the New Jersey Devils, screaming at referee Don Koharski after a game in the 1988 playoffs.

"It’s too bad he lives in the city. He’s depriving some small village of a pretty good idiot."- Mike Milbury, GM of the Islanders, on Ziggy Palffy’s agent Paul Kraus during a contract dispute.

"He's a gutless puke, that's what Travis Green is. That's why he doesn't wear an Islander uniform any more."-Mike Milbury on ex-Islander Travis Green for a perceived dirty hit on Milbury's once prized defenceman Kenny Jonsson.

“Let's put it this way: if one of my brothers were standing in front of the bus last night and we were about to leave and he was on the other team, I'd have run over him. I wouldn't have called out first to ask him to get out of the way, either. That's my mentality, that's the way it is. I don't really care."

- Brian Sutter, coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, shows his tender side in 2002.

."Somebody will make a joke and somebody else will laugh. We have a good dressing room here."

- Danny Markov describes the process of humor in the Carolina Hurricanes locker room shortly before being traded to Philadelphia.

“The bottom line is, if they want a hard (salary) cap, we’ll sit out for the rest of our lives.”-Bryan McCabe, Maple Leaf defenceman, before the 2004 lockout. McCabe managed to overcome his hesitancy to play under a cap to earn an average of almost 6 million a season.

The Gutter Bin Presents... Two More Classic All-Time Rants

Unfortunately, there aren't too many cases of coaches or players going off like this in the NHL but in baseball... there's a neverending supply of mental breakdowns and reporter beatdowns. We'll start off with some classic audio by Rich "Goose" Gossage, at this time part of the New York Yankees, going off at those pesky Bronx reporters. At one point Gossage calls one of them a "greasy c*!*sucker". Amazing.



Next up we'll go with Hall Of Famer Earl Weaver going off the rails on a radio segment called Managers Corner. Weaver is a beauty.



Be sure to check out Lee Elia's world famous rant already posted here.

Craziest Rant By A Coach - - - Ever

This is the audio of famous Chicaco Cub manager Lou Elia dropping the most massive F-Bomb on the fans back in 1983. Warning. Explicit F@!*ing language. The Cubbies were only 5-14 at the time but had just been booed off the field after another dismal loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates in front of a miniscule but angry set of fans at Wrigley.

This rant will likely never be topped. It's as safe as Gretzky's 92 goals.

Thanks to fellow hoser and baseball history fanatic Joe MacDonald for pointing this one out.

Old School Bench Clearing Brawl - In Russia!

The craziest thing about this brawl, which happened two days ago in the Russian league, is that you think it's all over about three times and then all hell breaks loose again. Funny things to watch for are the referee trying to wildly wave back the oncoming benches to no avail and one of the players grabbing an errant sweater from the other team and tossing it into the stands. That seems to set off a whole brawl in itself. Great stuff. Thanks to James Mirtle's blog for pointing this one out.

Sean Avery, Black Nail Polish and the Olsen Twins

From the NY Times: A short, must-read for fans and enemies alike of Sean Avery.

“I’d rather hang myself than talk about sports,” Mr. Avery said. He turned the conversation to the New Museum of Contemporary Art downtown.

His friends ribbed him about his unjock-like sensibilities, most visible in his usual fashion palette: black, highlighted by accents of black.

“I’m a dark guy,” Mr. Avery said. “I like that funereal feel.”

Not since Ron Duguay and his perm has New York seen a Ranger like this dude.

Don't Burn Your Retinas - Vintage NHL Commercials

Here's a quick collection of the good, the bad and the ugly of NHL advertising, whether it's ads by the league itself or prominent NHLers doffing products for other companies.

Let's start it off with the abhorrent crew of New York Rangers from the 70's doing a Vidal Sasson ad. Phil Esposito, Ron Duguay, Anders Hedberg etc. Utterly revolting yet compulsively watchable.



Tastes Great Mom!


Can I See Some ID Please Rob Ray


Adam Oates As A Sleazebag Nice marketing move.


You Don't Have To Be Sweet To Be Good Hextall crushes a paper puck.


Go To Hell Shanahan You Freak


Mess and Gretz


Gretzky and puppy dogs

Did Jim Gregory Induct Himself Into HHOF?

This is the question that David Pratt of the Vancouver Province asks and it's worth pondering.

Nobody wants to cast aspersions on Gregory's achievements or character - well maybe David Pratt - but ever since Gil Stein "inducted" himself into the Hall of Fame in the early 90's, an issue like this shouldn't be swept under the carpet.

James Duthie Interviews Roberto Luongo

TSN's James Duthie puts together a very funny piece on Luongo which includes his, err... stomach problems he had in the middle of a game in the playoffs last year, his bowed-legs and his baby making abilities. A must see.

When Going Retro Goes Horribly Wrong

Bloody horrific. There's nothing more to say about the new San Jose uniforms. Now easily the worst in the entire NHL.

Things Were Different In The 70's.

Here we have some of the New York Rangers in 1979, including Phil Esposito and Ron Duguay doing a jeans commercial. If you don't vomit in your mouth you'll laugh yourself to death. Maybe this is why Esposito said he would jump out of a window if he ever got traded to New York.

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

I feel sorry for this girl but it's too much to pass up for a laugh. "Such as...so to speak... US Americans..." An instant classic.

Classic Quotes

Here's another rancid batch of quotes from some of the best smack talkers (Mathew Barnaby) in the league over the years.

"To get my paycheque for two weeks, my family must work 200 years in Slovakia."

- Pavol Demitra of St.Louis talks about his 1.1 million-a-year contract in 1999.

"Cornelius, as we like to call him, gets under your skin. Planet of the Apes. Look at him. Seriously. He looks like Cornelius."

- Mathew Barnaby, then of the Penguins, on his bitter enemy Lyle Odelein.

"I scored on Tommy just to get my confidence going."

- Onetime Edmonton Oiler defenseman Scott Ferguson explains why he accidentally scored on his own goalie, Tommy Salo. The next game, Ferguson scored his first goal of the 2003-2004 season, and his first in 49 games.

"You give a hundred and twenty percent of your soul, you give up your family life, and then they kick you in the balls."

- Mike Keenan upon being fired by the Chicago Blackhawks as their coach and GM in 1992.

"The only difference between the Coyotes and 'Days of Our Lives' is that nobody has been shot on our team yet."

- Jeremy Roenick gets off a good blast about his own troubled Coyotes team in 2001.

Gretzky Associates Himself With Worst Band in Music History

Say it ain’t so Wayne! That was one of the many headlines across Canada when Wayne “The Great One” Gretzky was traded to La La Land in August of 1988. It could apply now as well.

Gretzky is making an appearance with poodle rockers Nickelback in their new video for “Rockstar”. As if this song wasn’t bad enough (don’t they already have a video for this?), now we have to endure one of Canada’s greatest icons being associated with Canada’s biggest musical embarrassment to date, and I’m including Celine Dion and Our Lady Peace.

Other celebrities included in this stinker are Gene Simmons of Kiss, Dale Earnhardt Jr., psychotic right winger and killer of defenseless animals Ted Nugent (the Nuge!), as well as Grant Hill and a few other has beens.

As if being caught up in a mind blowing gambling scandal thanks to his buddy Rick Tochett and coaching the dreadful Phoenix Coyotes wasn’t enough to further devalue the Great One. Now he is on videotape lyp-synching moronic lyrics written by perma-goatee Chad “Rockstar” Kroeger and his band of rich poseurs putting out music that is so produced and compressed with 35 separate guitar tracks that it sounds like it was played by a vending machine computer. But I guess the kids want what the kids want – corny ballads and weak rock anthems.

Please Wayne. I’m begging you. I still have tons of respect for everything you’ve done and the hours of joy I had watching my beloved Oilers in the 80’s. I even tolerated watching you make an ass of yourself on All My Children and watched that Saturday Night Live episode you hosted, not once, but twice! I struggled through your thousands of commercials telling me to buy trucks and take Tylenol and wear Roots. But this! I can’t tolerate it. Nickelback is out to destroy rock and roll as we used to know it. Can’t you see. They pretend to be like Nirvana but they’re really just a weak version of Foreigner with distortion pedals, bad haircuts and goatees and grade 2 poems masquerading as lyrics. Please Wayne! Don’t make me hate you.

Celebrating 19 Years of Peter Pocklington Being An A-Hole

It's almost like every kid who was a hockey fan in the 80's has had a similar moment. All over the internet, people are rekindling horrible memories of Wayne Gretzky being traded by Peter Pocklington to the L.A. Kings 19 years ago today. I might as well chip in.

I still have the front page clipping from the Ottawa Citizen where I learned that my hero was leaving the Oilers. I only had two favourite teams then - the Oilers and the Red Wings. The Red Wings were terrible at the time but the Oilers ruled over everybody. I actually started crying. Like a freaking baby. It was almost like losing a family member. Seriously. How could this disaster happen?

Basically because Peter Pocklington was a heartless capitalist. He owned the biggest meat packing plant in Alberta and proceeded to wage a war with his employee's union by bringing in replacement workers during a strike in 1986. This ego-driven war eventually crippled the business and Pocklington decided to cash in on Wayne Gretzky. It was that simple. He needed money and he sold the greatest player to ever live to future convict Bruce McNall. Nice move. He eventually had to sell the Oil after threatening the entire community by saying he wanted to move the team to Houston.

The craziest part of the story to me is the underhanded tactics Pocklington used to move Wayne. Nobody in the hockey department wanted to trade Gretzky. Gretzky himself was planning on raising his family in Edmonton. But Pocklington floated the idea to Gretzky's father and then, worst of all, allowed McNall to meet with Wayne in L. A. During this meeting, Pocklington called McNall's office and pretended not to know that Wayne was there. McNall put Pocklington on speaker phone where he went into a tirade against Gretzky. This then spurred Wayne into asking for a trade thereby allowing Pocklington to claim to the media that it was Wayne who wanted to be moved. Bullshit.

McNall and Pocklington obviously set this up in such a way that Wayne would have no choice but to ask for a trade.

And so we sit back and celebrate Peter Puck in all his infamy.

Trivia: After the Oilers won their first Cup, Pocklington gave his players the traditional Stanley Cup ring. Only problem was, the diamonds were fakes. Gretzky and some of his teammates actually had to pay to have the fake diamonds replaced with real ones! Now that's class!

Top Tens: Most Overpaid Players

1. Kimmo Timonen - Philadelphia: 07-08 - $8 mill. (Cap Hit $6.333 mill.)

This outrageous signing by Philadelphia was the shocker of the summer to this modest scribe. 6 years at an average of $6 million for a player who has never been past the first round of the playoffs and has one goal in 16 playoff games (as well as a minus 4 rating) is simply too much to pay. Granted, Timonen is highly thought of around the league but he is not even in the top ten as far as defenseman go. Yet he is now the highest paid D-man in the league. Ahead of Nicklas Lidstrom. Ahead of Scott Niedermayer. Astounding.

2. Robert Lang – Chicago: 07-08 - $4 mill. (Cap Hit $4 mill.)

A lumbering playmaker, Lang is already 36 and is not getting any faster. This is a poor replacement for losing Michael Handzus to L.A.

3. Bryan McCabe - Toronto: 07-08 - $7.150 mill. (Cap Hit $5.75 mill.)

Unbelievably, Toronto still has to ante up for another four seasons for the mistake prone McCabe. Sure he's got a cannon from the point but how many goals does he cost you? Plenty. Because of contracts like this, Toronto is stuck in neutral.

4. Roman Hamrlik - Montreal: 07-08 - $5.500 mill. (Cap Hit $5.5 mill.)

Montreal is quickly becoming the Edmonton of the east. They have to overpay athletes to play in their zoo. Hamrlik has one goal in 55 playoff games. GM Bob Gainey has turned into the biggest disappointment in the NHL. They are treading water by signing Hamrlik and Bryan Smolinski.

5. Daniel Briere - Philadelphia: 07-08 - $10 mill. (Cap Hit $6.5 mill.)

That's just too much money. Way too much. He is not a top five player in the league.

6. Scott Gomez – New York Rangers: 07-08 - $10 mill. (Cap Hit $7.357 mill.)

Same thing here.

7. Craig Rivet – San Jose Sharks: 07-08 - $3.5 mill. (Cap Hit $3.5 mill.)

Sure he's a leader but you don't pay $3.5 million for intangibles. Prudent sense dictates that Doug Wilson could have signed Rivet for $2 million a season.

8. Jose Theodore – Colorado Avalanche: 07-08 - $6 mill. (Cap Hit $5.333 mill.)

It's hard to fault the Avalanche. Theodore was once an MVP but sadly has fallen on hard times. Luckily they only have one more year to bear on this dud.

9. Markus Naslund – Vancouver Canucks: 07-08 - $6 mill. (Cap Hit $6 mill.)

Naslund looks disinterested lately. Probably because Vancouver has the dullest system in the league. He is just biding his time until he can either go back to Europe, retire, or sign with a team who still believes in scoring goals.

10. Ruslan Fedotenko – New York Islanders: 07-08 - $2.9 mill. (Cap Hit $2.9 mill.)

Fedotenko has scored over twenty goals just once in his career. Last season he had 12. So Garth Snow gives him $3 million. Makes perfect sense.

(Thanks to NHL Numbers for the salary figures)

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - Comrie Gets Some

First Mike Comrie is spotted in Ottawa's Hy's Steakhouse cutting into a medium rare rib-eye with none other than Jack Bauer's daughter Elisha Cuthbert during the Sens run to the Cup finals. Apparently they were just friends as Cuthbert was dating Sean "The Ratfucker" Avery at the time.








Undaunted, Comrie moved down the list of talentless blondes and came up with ... Hilary Duff. Ottawa players have dated celebrities before - Yash with C-lister Carol Alt (check out her acting chops in the made for TV movie Swarmed. Not since Bambi on her first sheet of ice has anyone looked so clueless) , Daigle who pretended to date Pamela Anderson (she couldn't stop laughing when a reporter asked her about the "romance") but ex-Sen Comrie seems to be the man on the move these days.

Too bad Comrie didn't re-sign in Ottawa because then we might have gotten to spot Hilary in the organic section of Hartmans grocery store on Bank Street. Oh, we would have screamed ...

Poor Yashin. Nobody Understands Him But His Woman ... And She Be Jivin Too

Alexei Yashin is off to mobster controlled Russia to play hockey next year because no team in their right mind would give him more than a Chinese nickel to come in and destroy their dressing room chemistry.




Perhaps the most hated man in hockey, Yashin is leaving gal pal Carol Alt in New York. She vociferously came to her man's defence by not only claiming that Yashin was happy to go back to Russia, but even dredged up the old Ottawa business by saying that he never wanted to leave Ottawa in the first place. What a misunderstanding!

It doesn't matter to uber-agent Mark Gandler. He's still raking in the cash from Yashin's bought out contract with the Islanders. He's got enough cash to keep feeding greasy New York City hot dogs into that grill of his that he calls a mouth for a long time to come. Meanwhile Yashin is playing for the same crowds in Russia who once threw banana's on the ice at black player Anson Carter. Nice people there. Don't eat any yellow snow Yash.

Canadian Kids "Gone Wild"

Canada’s newest royal family, the Staal’s from Thunder Bay, Ontario, have gotten into a little trouble it seems. Eric from the Carolina Hurricanes and younger brother Jordan from the Pittsburgh Penguins were thrown in the clink for a “bachelor party gone awry”. In short, they were just acting on their inner Canadian impulses which is to drink enough beer to kill a mule and then assume that everyone they see wants to party as well, including motorists going by on the highway. When the cops showed up, half of them ran into the forest which is funny enough in itself. Even the cops were having a laugh over it, one of them saying that they were just “Canadian kids gone wild!” Fair enough. It’s not like they were engaging in a dog fighting ring or anything. They’ll get a soft kick in the ass from the authorities and everyone will have a good story to tell down the road. But the Staal brothers are not the only Canadian kids to have gone “wild” in the past. Let’s refresh our memories:

Koo Koo Bananas. That’s the name of the bar in Oshawa where a young Eric Lindros was arrested for pouring a beer over a womans head who resisted his advances in 1993. At the time, Eric was the golden boy (well not in Quebec) and the public was shocked that he was giving golden showers to their young women in sleazy dives. Eric survived this “wild” episode and went on to be the most dominant player of the 90’s until Canadian kid gone steamroller, Scott Stevens, relocated Lindros’ head in the 2000 playoffs. They’re still looking for Eric’s career.

When Chris Pronger was at the mature age of 19 and playing for the struggling Hartford Whalers, he quickly gained a reputation as a hell-cat by beating the living shit out of a few people in a full fledged barroom brawl and then getting charged with drunk driving not long afterwards. Then Mike Keenan brought him to the St. Louis Blues and beat the living shit out him until he was a star player. Only problem is, Keenan threw down a few golden pops himself and got into a moving tin can back in 1990 and got nailed by the fuzz.

I don’t even want to get into the antics of Theo Fleury.

Getting off the drunk topic and onto the just plain stupid, how about Alexandre Daigle. Now he was a beauty. Gifted, funny, charming and pleasant, he was a complete mess in Ottawa. He actually wasn’t too bad on the ice, better than people give him credit for, but off the ice he kept stepping in shit everywhere he turned. First mistake was going number one in the draft and then saying that no one will remember who goes number two. Unfortunately number two was Chris Pronger who was so mad at the slight that he destroyed a barroom and then went on to win the Hart Trophy and the Stanley Cup. Then Daigle posed in a nurses outfit for a trading card company. What’s the big deal right? For some reason, management was pissed. Then the coupe de grace: Daigle openly jokes in a full airplane about planting a bomb in his suitcase. Not funny Alex. He got yanked off the flight and into the headlines. Then he gloated about dating Pamela Anderson. She said they had a cup of coffee. Then he said that he didn’t enjoy hockey anymore. For a Canadian kid, that’s really going “wild”.