Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Good Dogs, Expansion Draft Lists, and Pranks

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

The third star: This dog. He's good.

When the dog wants to play catch with the puck on the ice at Verizon Center, you play catch with the dog on the ice at Verizon Center.— CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals)March 26, 2017

It bothers me a bit that this dog can go full speed down the ice, then slow down and stop without slamming into the boards and half the time I still can't.

The second star: The Washington Capitals. Speaking of shaggy things on the Washington ice, for the second straight year Justin Williams did the crazy hair thing for his team photo. And this time, the fad is spreading.

What's everyone looking at? — Washington Capitals (@Capitals)March 27, 2017

Look, I think we all know what needs to happen here: the Capitals need to forgo the traditional playoff beards and switch over to playoff bed head. Come on, Washington. It's not like doing it the old way has really been working for you.

The first star: This poor Bruins' goaltender. Normally, "emergency goalie" means a guy who got sent onto the ice because of someone else's emergency. Not in the case of Keith Segee.

Tough call for the top spot this week. Justin Williams' hair had heart, but slapshot in the groin had a slapshot in the groin.

The NHL announced this week that, after three weeks of getting hammered by fans, media, and even some of their own teams, they would go ahead and make the protected lists for this year's expansion draft public after all.

Yay?

I mean, good for the NHL. They got it right. After a long season in which virtually every move (and non-move) made by a team was immediately justified with "but the expansion draft," of course fans needed to see the lists. Forget all the hype and excitement and armchair GMing that we'll get over the few days between the lists being released and the actual draft. This was about basic transparency. Fans need to know this stuff.

And yet, this being the NHL, they had be dragged kicking and screaming into doing what their fans wanted. (See also: Olympics, fixing the loser point, increasing scoring, etc.) And of course, they couldn't just make the announcement with a simple "We screwed up, our fans told us so, we listened, and we've fixed it." Instead, we got this:

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly on why the NHL ultimately decided to release the lists of protected and available players for expansion draft: — Dan Rosen (@drosennhl)March 29, 2017

Oh hey, they were prioritizing transparency! Isn't that good to know? And here you thought they were very obviously trial-ballooning a policy that was the exact opposite of transparency. Silly fans. Don't you know the NHL is all about transparency? (Uh, just don't ask about no-trade clauses, or conditional trades, or basic contract details, or…)

Still, a win is a win, and this time the fans did eventually win. It took way longer than it should have, and it's alarming that the league really thought they could sneak the dumb option through without anyone noticing, but it's nice to get a reminder that every once in a great while, NHL fans really can get the people who run this league to remember they exist and do the right thing.

We're well into the home stretch of the NHL season, with everyone having just a handful of games left to make their final playoff push, wrap up a higher seed or, in the case of the Colorado Avalanche, just try not to hurt themselves. Every player in the league is hoping for a strong finish, the kind that helps his team while also padding his season-long stat totals.

The NHL has a long history of players finishing the year with a hot streak. Mario Lemieux once had eight goals and 13 points over his team's final five games. Luc Robitaille finished his rookie season with seven goals in the Kings' last three games. A few years ago, Jamie Benn had ten points in his last three games, allowing him to come from behind to win a buzzer-beating scoring title.

Those guys were all superstars. Today, let's look back at a player whose season-ending hot streak was significantly less likely: longtime NHL tough guy Jeff Odgers.

Odgers was a feared junior enforcer who was never drafted. After a year in the IHL, he got his break when the expansion Sharks offered him a contract. That launched a 12-year career in which he played for four teams, racked up 2,364 PIM, was once traded straight-up for the legendary Al Iafrate, and fought pretty much everyone.

He wasn't some one-note goon—he cracked double digits in goals three times and briefly served as Sharks captain—but he certainly wasn't what you'd call an offensive threat. And that's what made the last few games of the 1992-93 season so memorable.

On the morning of April 1, 1993, the Sharks were in last place and on their way to one of the worst years in NHL history. Odgers, in his second NHL season, was sitting with nine goals and 15 points, and had had just one multi-point game on the season. That night, he recorded two assists against the Jets. He had another assist in the next game, followed by the first three-point night of his career, followed by the first four-point night of his career. He was held off the scoreboard for the next two games but closed out the season with two more points against the Flames.

All told, Odgers managed 12 points in two weeks, accounting for nearly half of his 27 points on the season; his nine assists would be 13 percent of his ten-year career output. It ranks as one of the most productive Aprils in NHL history, and I'm going to go ahead and say it was the most productive ever among players who once jumped Bob Probert.

Tomorrow is April Fool's Day, which means you'll spend most of the day being annoyed by lame attempts at humor from wacky radio DJs and sad corporate brands on social media. The only good news is that this year it falls on a Saturday, so you don't have to worry about Crazy Gus messing around with the office coffee machine. April Fool's Day sucks.

Hey, speaking of lame pranks that haven't been funny in years: Can we stop pretending it's funny when hockey teams make the rookie go out on the ice first, then leave him out there to skate a lap or two on his own before joining him?

Clayton Keller skates a few laps by himself before his NHL debut here in St. Louis — Greg Dillard (@GregDillard)March 27, 2017

NHL teams love this prank. They pull it off every time. No really, every time. Every. Single. Time.

This has been going on for years. And every time it happens, it makes the highlights and gets shown during the game, at which point we have to listen to the announcers fake laugh their way through the whole thing. What a bunch of cards, am I right? Can you believe the kid fell for it?

I promise you: nobody is fooled by this. Literally every rookie who gets told, "Hey kid, why don't you lead us out there tonight" knows exactly what's going to happen. (Look at Brock Boeser from a few days ago—he sees the guys aren't coming even before he's halfway to the ice.) But he has no choice, so he has to just half-heartedly skate around making "I'm a good sport" face while the veterans high-five in the hallway.

To be clear, I'm not saying NHL teams should stop doing this. They're pro athletes, and as long as they're not hurting anyone they should be able to have whatever goofy, pointless rituals they want. If they want to pull the exact same "surprise" on literally every rookie who shows up over the course of the season, go ahead. If it's tradition, sure, keep it up.

But the rest of us don't have to keep pretending that it's funny or even especially interesting. It's just a weird thing that hockey players like to do. Cool. No need to pretend like we've just witnessed the second coming of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.

That thing where the rookie gets 'tricked' into skating onto the ice reminds me of the 16 year old who pretends he still believes in Santa

— Bloge Salming (@blogesalming)March 31, 2016

(Just for the record, pulling the same joke on P.K. Subban in his first game back in Montreal was still funny.)

So if the whole "make the rookie skate a lap" joke isn't funny, is there a better example of hockey pranking? There is, and we're going to watch it now. I won't pretend that what you're about to see is exactly Richard Pryor on Sunset-level coming genius, but you have to give these guys credit for at least putting a little effort into things. So let's travel back eight years or so and watch as a pair of Blackhawks veterans harass a bunch of wide-eyed kids.

• So we start off with Patrick Sharp, who introduces our, um, [drums fingers on table impatiently] OK, you know what, I get it. Everyone go ahead and take a minute to get lost in Sharp's overpowering handsomeness. I'll be here when you're ready to start the clip.

• Welcome back. Sharp lets us know we're going to be seeing some of his patented road trip pranks. His co-conspirator will be his roommate, Adam Burish.

• The first prank involves a garbage pail full of water, and the intended victim is Brent Seabrook. Right off the bat, they've made a key mistake by going after a guy who's been around a few years. They knock on his door, which he somehow manages to open without actually tipping the bucket. That's such a veteran move.

• I'll just pause here to mention how much I cherish the thought of the 2009 Blackhawks being so racked by paranoia that they won't even open their hotel doors all the way just in case Sharp and Burish are out there screwing around. This team went on to win the Stanley Cup, by the way.

• The bucket does tip eventually, which is apparently enough for our two protagonists, who take off down the hallway giggling in probably my favorite moment of the video. Nice touch getting a fuzzy glimpses of a wet-footed Seabrook leaning out into the hallway like it's the Patterson–Gimlin film.

• So after that only marginally successful prank, Sharp and Burish decide to focus on new victims: "the kids" (i.e., Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews). Our helpful veterans decide to kindly set their younger teammates up with, well, basically everything on the room service menu.

• "Decaf, eh, we don't want them getting too hyped up in the morning." Now I'm trying to picture what a "too hyped up" Jonathan Toews would look like. I'm not succeeding.

• "Taser likes omelets." I don't know why, but I really want to see somebody show up at a Blackhawks road game with that on a sign.

• It turns out our two victims have already requested breakfast, so Burish just swaps the orders out and steals theirs. In case you were wondering, Kane and Toews apparently roomed together for five years until the latest CBA gave veteran players the right to go solo on road trips. I'm willing to bet that Sharp and Burish voted against that provision.

• We immediately cut to a shot of a groggy Toews, who says he just sent the food back. You know hotels just love this stuff. What percentage of room service orders from pro sports teams are sent back because they were pranks? I bet it's at least 90 percent. If you work in a hotel kitchen and an order comes in for three dozen different meals to the same room, don't even bother filling it unless the ticket says "Bartolo Colon."

• Our third and final prank turns out to be already underway, as Sharp returns from Toews and Kane's room to reveal that "something slid up my pants": a pair of room keys. Can we just point out that getting both keys is a solid move? You never know when one of those hotel cards won't work. You always need to make sure you have a dependable backup. Too bad Sharp didn't remind Jim Nill of that this year.

• At this point, "pranking" basically becomes "breaking and entering," as Sharp and Burish just walk into Toews' room and take his luggage, then root through it, steal some of his stuff, and load him up with various items from the hotel room.

• By the way, you'll notice that Kane doesn't appear in the video from this point on, presumably because he's been abducted and thrown down an elevator shaft as part of prank No. 4.

• Now we get a shirtless Burish telling a shirtless Sharp that Toews is calling around looking for his bag, at which point we cut to a shirtless Toews. This is the most naked torso I've seen in a hockey video since every Rob Ray fight ever.

• So a half-naked Toews is wandering the hallways looking for his bag, because apparently it has not occurred to him that the two veterans who are always pranking people and who literally just pranked him this morning might be behind this prank. Not sure what he's thinking in terms of post-playing career, but I'm going to go ahead and rule out private detective.

• And that ends our clip. As an epilogue, you can watch this clip from last year, in which Burish explains how he and Sharp ended up as the team's prank partners, reminisces about these and other hijinks, and reveals that Toews somehow made it all the way back to the team bus before realizing his bag had half a hotel room's worth of stolen goods in it. He also wonders why nobody had shirts on.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.