Deriding the Panthers: fun that never ends

By team member Triz, once again the Forrest Gump of blogging. Or perhaps me just plagarizing her emails, who's to say? But that's okay. I still think she's a hot piece of ass. I mean, astute hockey analyst. Right. Moving on.

Last night when I got a text message that Jacques Martin had pulled Tomas Vokoun at the hilarious time of 7:10 into the game, I damn near wanted to get into my car RIGHT THAT SECOND AND DRIVE DOWN TO MIAMI TO WITNESS THIS CLUSTERFUCK ON ICE FOR MYSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why? I don't know - attending a Florida Panthers game is kind of like when you feel compelled to slow down and gape at the pileup on the side of the roadway, or how you can't flip the channel when they are performing surgery on the Discovery Channel. You WANT turn away, you know you NEED to turn away, you end up mostly queasy and hating yourself for watching, but some twisted, freaky part of you can't look away.

The most hilarious thing, though, is that the benching was not the freakiest part of last night's game, THIS was:

Later, defenseman Steve Montador got his second goal in a week by firing a long shot from beyond the right circle to tie the score.

Let me just repeat that, STEVE MONTADOR, the National Hockey League's Most Prolific Benchwarmer, He who has led the league in healthy scratches two years running, he who has spent more games in his career as a Panther in a suit as opposed to a uniform, scored his SECOND GOAL IN A WEEK.

And honestly, given the absolute lunacy of the above statement, I think any further mocking would be a little redundant.

So we'll move on. Hey, why don't we get our good friends from the Miami Herald to get some quotes from some Panthers themselves regarding their recent play:

"It's embarrassing, captain Olli Jokinen said.
Goaltender Tomas Vokoun said: "It is quite actually embarrassing."
Defenseman Bryan Allen said: "It's unacceptable."

OK, OK, I was going to go with "humiliating;" "nauseating;" "gave me the runs;" and/or "likely to spurn you into a homicidal rage," but I suppose "embarrassing" and "unacceptable" are reasonable substitutes.

Trying to motivate his team, Jacques Martin has taken the Panthers to boot camp and had them meet with a sports psychologist. On Wednesday, he benched the team's highest-paid player early in its game against Ottawa. What he does next is anyone's guess.

Um, I'm no psychologist myself, but, after last night, the loss Saturday, and the Panther's recent play of late in general, my guess would be what Jacques does next is lock the garage door, seal the windows, and begin fellating the ol' exhaust pipe, but that's just me hazarding a guess. Here's a little tip to anyone in the Panthers organization who got Jacques in this year's Secret Santa raffle: shoelaces= bbbaaaadddd idea.