Under the Bucket: The Panthers Are a Joke, so Is the NHL's Coach's Challenge

(Editor's note: Welcome to Under the Bucket, where Deaner from the classic flick Fubar tackles all things NHL for VICE Sports. You can follow him on Twitter and read previous installments here.)

I finally managed to rip down the electric reindeer from my neighbour's garage last night and had a pretty sweet spot picked out for it over my front window. So I goes to plug it in and the fucker don't flicker. I banged it on the ground like a hundred times, but it just wouldn't start working. But here's the thing—instead of nailing it up anyway, and stealin' a bunch of new lights and trying to drape them on top, I went out and stole another one from a different house, and it works fuckin' great.

Now imagine if the original electric reindeer was a panther, and the replacement lights I was gonna drape over the lifeless carcass cost $68 million, and I was borrowing that money from my landlord. I bet you're thinkin', "Deaner what the fuck are you talking about," and you're right, it don't make a lick of sense, but that's EXACTLY what's goin' on with the NHL and the Florida Panthers right now.

They're trying to loan $68 million on this dead fuckin' carcass!! I had more empties at my party than they had fans at the last Panthers game. It's a fuckin' joke. Hey, Gary, there's a brand new NHL rink in the East which sold out its EXHIBITION GAME three months in advance. Oh ya, that's right, Gary and his millionaire dickwads are gonna hold actual fans hostage to get $500 million for Nordiques expansion, so we may as well get used to the Panthers, cuz they ain't goin' anywhere.

But get a load of the holiday DEAL at Sunrise—TWO premium tickets to THREE GAMES, TWO tix to the Everglades theme park (where you get to airdrop out of a helicopter on an actual gator into the bayou), free parking, TWO JERSEYS, AND an autographed puck, for $99. THIS IS REAL! Sorry for the all caps but THAT'S $17 A TICKET for an NHL GAME!!!! Sweet Mary on a merry-go-round it costs more to go see the fucking Wheeling Nailers. And at the arena in Wheeling, they don't even have a zamboni between periods, they just drag around a wasted guy who pissed his pants. C'mon!

Oh, sure, the players love comin' to the rink in flip flops and swim trunks, but how do you think Jonathan Huberdeau feels when he gets a hat trick on home ice and the only thing that comes flying down from the fans is an IOU from Gary Bettman? Bush league. And of course if they get their loan, the league's promised them an All-Star Game. Just unreal.

And, man, this coach's challenge disaster… one day there's gonna be a challenge for the Stanley Cup-winning goal, and we're all gonna be sittin' there for like 45 minutes while some chimpanzee in Toronto looks at a screen. Did they win the Cup or not? Only the monkey knows! Guys, the NHL made $4.1 BILLION last year. BILLIONS!!!!! If I'm in charge, fuck the coach's challenge.

I'd hire a team of trained hockey dogs who can sniff out rules to watch every single game and the second they see something wrong, the dogs start fuckin' barking like crazy! They have a direct line to the refs. Did they score when it was offside? Call down, stop the fucking game and blow off the play. No goal. Now put the time bark on the clock and let's get the barkin' game bark on.

Coach always says hockey's all about confidence—no matter how much talent you got, if you keep losin' all the time you're gonna start to feel like a fuckin' loser. So here's what I think we should do to help out the Oilers and Leafs who must really be feelin like fuckin' losers right now. You drop both teams down a division to the AHL, and see what happens. Best-case scenario, they play each other for the Calder Cup, the Oilers win, the boys feel like winners, they move on back up and maybe make the NHL playoffs in 2017. Baby steps. And the Leafs, well, I bet the fans would just be so fuckin' stoked they finally had a winning team, they wouldn't give a shit if their opponents were the Baltimore Grey Nuns, so AHL might be the long-term solution.

Well, that's it for this week. Thanks for tunin' in, and remember what my cousin Dwayne Gretzky said, "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't drink."