For some reason Twitter gives the hockey fan the right to do one of two things. The first is troll and attack at great length, or threaten the life or job of, any hockey fan they don’t like for whatever reason. My personal favourite is when people attack me for making a non-hockey related tweet. I’m sorry, but when did I become a hockey reporter, or NHL spokeswoman? It’s like I’ve somehow risen above human status, and couldn’t possibly be a real person underneath the puck obsession. Yet it’s fine when they tweet whole conversations about the coffee they are drinking. Interesting… Anyway, the second thing the majority of hockey fans seem to use Twitter for is kissing the firm, gladiatorial like tushies of the hockey players themselves.

OMG @AnyNHLPlayer you have the best taste in music.

@AnyNHLPlayer OMG please RT me because it’s my birthday and, like, you RTing me validates my existence or something, right?”

Now, in all your self-denying wisdom, can you please explain to me how this absolutely ridiculous behaviour is in any way different from the “puck bunnies” that attempt to stroke the ego of your shared hockey deities, as a means to stroke something else? Oh, is it because you “actually like hockey.” You, “actually understand hockey.” You, “have his game worn jersey.” You’re “a guy.” Please. Start familiarizing yourself with the term “jock sniffer.” It’s the first step to recovery, after all. And to be fair, I rarely see a puck bunny act as desperately as the hockey Twitter community. And, also note, these bunnies tend to have the guts to coo similar shameless flirts as those listed above to the hockey player in person, whereas you tend to hide behind a damn computer screen. Who’s pathetic now?

What I really don’t get is why Twitter endears hockey players to the fans in the first place. It has taken the completely opposite effect on me. It actually makes me deeply reflect on some of my past life choices, and regret ever letting myself get entangled with far, far, far too many of them… far! Mind you, I do know from experience that players aren’t always whom they pretend to be online. But isn’t that the same for almost everyone? The difference is hockey players have a lot more to prove so they go to greater lengths with their avatars. However, even with great personal effort on the part of the player as an individual, there still seems to only be five types of hockey players on Twitter that are the main recipients of all your 140 character love songs.

1. @TheProducer: This player seems to be begging for some type of medal because he has the same XM radio in his over priced whips, as the rest of us. Listening to ALT Nation has somehow translated, in his mind, to superior knowledge of the music industry, which he would obviously have a career in, if it weren’t for that pesky hockey. And being the nice little suck ups that you are, you let him continue to live in his dreamworld where he is the only person on the face of the earth that listens to Radiohead.

2. @TheChronicEndorser: This player tweets to make himself feel like the next Gretzky by acting like any sort of product or clothing he uses or wears is some sort of endorsement because he’s the obvious s-h-i-t! Please tell me you don’t actually go out and buy the same toothpaste or water as he does, just because he tweeted about it, and you want to try and connect with him on some creepy level. @TheChronicEndorser is the funniest in his AHL form when he can be found feigning endorsements to prove to the fans, and himself, that he’s a somebody even if NHL GMs wouldn’t trust him to fill in even as a benchwarmer. “Blahblahblah Sports is the ONLY place I get my skates sharpened!” Really, so if I go there, I, too, can hope to fall short of the mark and achieve total mediocrity? Beautiful.

3. @TheFashionista or @TheSeanAveryesque: “I tweet about fashion because I want to fuck models. I know about fashion because I want to fuck models. I’m kind of a bitch about fashion because I want to fuck models.” We get it. And no we don’t care that your plaid shirt, which looks like the ones they have at Walmart for $10, by the way, has a designer tag that most of us have no idea who or what it is. Well at least I don’t care, but I suppose you probably do. Bear in mind that I don’t actually follow ANY NHL players on Twitter, and that I’m also in my Uber Cunt phase right now, if you haven’t already noticed.

4. @PermaPRMode: This is the player that never makes an original tweet, yet you still praise him like his three daily predictable tweets are somehow literary genius:

Tweet #1: @PermaPRMode: Just had a great skate this morning with the boys. Bring on the #VisitingTeam!

Tweet #2: @PermaPRMode: On my way to the rink. Huuuuuuuuge game tonight!

Tweet #3: @PermaPRMode: Huuuuuuuuuge win/tough loss tonight! The energy in the building was amazing as usual.

Wow. Exciting.

5. @TheInappropriateFlirt: The player that uses his Twitter account to flirt publicly with any blond, or skinny, or over-tanned, or half naked, or tit-pic’d avatar that shows up in his @mentions. When will guys learn that if a girl chooses to show parts of her body instead of her face in her profile pic, it’s probably because it ain’t all that. Who am I kidding, this is the very age of the butter face, after all. But still, if you act like this line of tweeting is anything but mildly amusing in its pitifulness, then I don’t even want to know what levels you drop to when you make your contribution to the alternate dimension that is the Twitter feed. Of course, public flirtations always lead to public dramas, so I guess there’s some attraction to following this particular player.

So there you have it; the extent of the hockey player contribution to Twitter in a nice little package. If the world wasn’t composed of a terrifying majority of jock sniffers and celebrity whores, then I’m sure Twitter would have already completely destroyed whatever image hockey has attempted to maintain. You know, if I haven’t single-handedly done that already, as they say.

Countdown to my sabbatical in NHL Land: 85 days. Please note that I can’t guarantee that I’ll be out of Uber Cunt mode by this time. Enjoy!

Anyway, the puck bunny identity has never been one that I’ve accepted, but I haven’t denied it either. The truth of the matter is, I love hockey. I have since I was a kid. So, I can’t see how a scandal with a hockey player changes that fact. But I also know that I haven’t been totally innocent and lived up to the standards all you “real” fans have of the non-puck bunny, as a true female hockey fan would never, ever get down to it with a sacred player of their favourite sport. So, I don’t really know what I am (who I am), but I’ve nevertheless decided to give you the real confession. Who knows; maybe this is the first step in admitting I have a problem.

There were several instances, you remember, when the she-pigs left novel length comments on here basically telling me everything they knew I was doing behind the closed doors of NHL hotels, but also how it made me, the misguided, insecure, ugly duckling, feel on the inside. My “bitterness was obvious” from being used by the hockey player… apparently. Here’s confession the first from the fucked up depths of my seemingly shallow moral pool:

First of all, before I begin my story, I want to say that I don’t really know what happens between ALL hockey players and puck bunnies behind closed doors. All I have is my own confession, and the creepy stories I’ve heard about others over the years, that you have no doubt heard as well. I’m sure you assume terrible things. Puck bunnies do whatever a hockey player wants. They do strange, bizarre things that you’re almost certain no one else is doing in bed. You probably imagine the craziest things your vanilla brain has absorbed from the pages of Cosmo, and know that any girl with any self-respect would just simply say no. But until you experience it for yourself, you can only guess. For example, one night when “one of mine” got into town the night before his game, I went to meet him at the hotel. It wasn’t the first time, but he did have a girlfriend that he had been (is still) living with for years. She’s the type of girl the angry masses had said I didn’t measure up to. She’s famous-ish in her own right, plastic, hockey wife material, so why was I, with my pale skin and brown eyes, the one he runs to, stares at intensely (longingly?) from the bench between shifts, and not some other barbie doll in the crowd?

So, what happened at the hotel that particular night? Well, I got up to the room, and he had already ordered some wine. We didn’t paw at each other the very moment we saw each other. In fact we just chilled out on the bed, fully clothed, and hands occupied on the stems of our wine glasses. We just talked for hours and hours. We laughed about people we knew, and things from our history. We argued about which conference was better the East or West. I took East just to piss him off because he was in the West at the time. He also got very serious, and told me about all the things he wished he had changed in his life. By his own standards he was struggling as a player, and it was consuming him. He was already wondering what life would have been like if he went to university instead of playing the game. I had never seen him like that, and I wondered if I was there because having me around made him feel important or successful as a player in some way. I didn’t know what to say to make him feel better, but it didn’t matter, he reached over and kissed me anyway. And that’s just something for you to consider before you let your imagination run away with you when you read the rest of my story.

When all of “this” began, and by this I mean when hockey players entered my personal life, I was about sixteen years old. The hockey players in this story were obviously playing in the O. As a teenager, I regarded hockey players as human, and compared to NHL players that, judging by their tweets, do nothing more than shop like a broad, and buy cars and boats, they seemed more blue collar than most guys. They talked funny. They had strange accents that I think they actually started putting on when they began playing AAA as a tween. The “hockey player accent,” as I think of it, but American hockey fans probably think it’s just a Canadian accent. They only seemed to do five things: eat, sleep, play hockey, drink, and fuck like rabbits. They were intimidating to a virgin such as I was because they pursued intensely, and no innocent little Catholic school girl was going to live up to the orgies, and other terrifying things hockey players did with girls that everyone whispered about.

If I was ever bitter about “being used” then it was hockey player #2 that gets the credit for that. The situation with him was different than the first one. In the typical intense fashion, he pursued me with everything he had in him. He was crafty, that one. I’m not sure if I believed the bullshitty facade that he was trying to maintain so much as I thought it was fatally adorable that he tried to make himself seem like such an angel. Of course, it was just a bullshitty facade, and to add insult to the injurious nature of the thing, he proceeded to use more lies in his exit strategy, which inevitably made me feel far worse. The truth of the matter was he had a girlfriend – for years at that point even. I had heard rumours about it before, but he always denied them. So, when things got too intense, he pulled out (literally and figuratively), and made some excuse that he had “just met” someone else. Had the asshole told me the truth, I probably would have found some solace in being the ex-other woman rather than the rejectee, and, who knows, maybe I’d be a normal person today, if it were not for the ramifications of this lie. It took me years to actually find out the truth, so don’t think it was one of those, “Aha! I knew it all along” moments. And he did EVENTUALLY marry that poor, poor girl, I should add. The thing was, at that moment, I stopped seeing hockey players as people, and started to view them as things, monstrous machines with no sense of decency, and no regard for anyone that they didn’t think had a purpose. They were just sources of entertainment and amusement both on and off the ice. I hated them all, but somehow, I grew up to become their female embodiment.

I’m not sure if “used” is the way I felt with him either. Maybe deceived is a better word. There was another one, maybe, that made me feel that way. Things got really intense with him, really quickly, and really frequently. All the time. Daily, in fact. On one of the days I was free from his clutches (the team was on the road), I was OBVIOUSLY having one of my guy friends give me the low down on why this was happening all the time. Besides he was a fan of the team, and so I had to explain to him why the guy was unfit to come off his injury even though he was supposed to play a couple days after he started with me – HAHA! Too many sleepless nights. Anyway, the guy was really into it. Like, REALLY into it. He kept saying, “I don’t want this to ennnnnddddd!” My friend gave me props for that, “Wow, that’s a compliment. Think about it. He plays in the NHL. He’s been around. He’s probably seen it all. You must be doing something right.” I wasn’t convinced. I figured maybe he was just desperate. You know, having a drought on account of the injury, maybe. But then I started to see it for myself. He was addicted, and addicts quickly become careless with masking the ugly face of the addiction itself. I started to feel like a sex toy, a tailor-made sensation he couldn’t get enough of, and for some reason it really disturbed me. You know, like those guys that go out and drop ten grand on a Real Doll instead of getting a girlfriend. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I was thought of as a meaningless object, but it was the first time I really felt like I was. It eventually got to the point where I didn’t even want to see him. Then I told him I was moving to Japan in a matter of days, and he made a nice point to promptly stop talking to me. Cold turkey.

Anyway, I was sure I had learned my lesson with #2. One of my friends said she was proud of me for not typecasting all hockey players after the first one, so I could give this guy a chance, but now I knew what they were really like, and it was time to move on. So, I swore off hockey players, and decided to swear off the sex, too. You know, preserve the goods for someone that would actually appreciate them. I didn’t realize that I’d be out of the game for nearly four years, and I can’t believe I actually made it that long. Some of my guy friends used to make bets about when I’d finally cave. Like I said, since I no longer saw hockey players as people, there were two types of guys out there: hockey players, and non-hockey players. Non-hockey players were awarded human status, which made them very scary in my books. Non-hockey players were serious. They followed social codes. They opened car doors. They’d hang out with you and not even try to put their hand on your thigh, or your hand on their… But if you got too involved they’d spring all those horrible C-words on you: commitment, compromise, couple, all the things that scare the shit out of me, but also that I’m scared I’ll never have – especially as I get older. I mean how much longer do I have left? I won’t be young forever, and eventually the fountain of noncommittal penis is going to dry up.

Four years dragged on simply because I was scared of getting entrapped by a non-hockey player. There’s no fear with a hockey player because I know that no matter what we have, I’m not gonna be put in the hockey wife passenger seat. As my anti-fan club put it, I was too fat and ugly to be a hockey wife. Over those four years I had mulled over all types of ridiculous situations, which basically made my self-worth about a zero. How come hockey players do all kinds of kinky weird shit with puck bunnies, but they’ve never thought to ask me for it? Why were some puck bunnies infamous and getting talked about all over the internet, but they kept me a secret? Seriously, how fucked up is that? It’s not that I wanted to be exploited in either of those situations, but I really had convinced myself that I was an embarrassment or guilty pleasure that didn’t even warrant a high five. Ouch. I was young, like I said, and I didn’t learn the truth about what happened after the infamous New Years Eve of 2002-03 until THIS season. I think part of me was scared that if I dated a non-hockey player and liked him, and took it to the next level, he’d be out of my life before the sun came up. One of my concentrations in university was Sexual Diversity, and the first thing we learned on the first day of the random elective I took, which I would end up getting a degree in, was that sex is power, but for me, up to this point sex always resulted in me losing mine.

Even though I was celibate, hockey players were really the only guys (things) giving me the time of day, and, tragically, that’s the way it’s always been. One of my girl friends always says, “I’m so jealous of you. You have all these pro hockey players all over you! Why can’t I get guys like that?” That always hits me like a punch in the face. It’s not something to be admired, it’s something to be pitied. Think about it. The only guys that are all over me, would never dream of “putting a ring on it” as the kids say. All hockey wives look the same, act the same, are the same. Theo Fleury says it pretty well in his book, Playing With Fire, “Wrong as it it, hockey players view women like cars. You have your own car and you love your car and you want to take care of your car, and you want to take your car to every important meeting you have, and you want it to be beautiful and shiny and sometimes with new headlights. But you love other guys’ cars. You love looking at their cars. You don’t want to have their cars, but you would love to take them for a drive once in a while, and it’s a horrible premise for a relationship.” So, I suppose I’m just a demo car, a hybrid maybe, that they can feel good about for a while, but when it comes down to it, they put up the cash for the gas guzzling luxury model to keep up appearances in front of the guys and the cameras.

A few weeks ago, one of my hockey player friends and I were shooting the shit about our recent escapades, and he weighed in on the whole matter as well. I said, “I don’t know what it is. I don’t look like a hockey wife, I don’t act like a hockey wife, so why is every guy I meet a damn hockey player?” What he said in response was a mouthful in its conciseness, “You have a certain indescribable characteristic. That’s how I met you, too.” We had met years ago at a bar in the offseason. I was out with a friend, and she was there to meet a boy off the Internet, so I was alone for the most part, and needed a friend. The evening ended with my new friend and I running down to the marina and trespassing on some fancy boat where things got heated, but not too heated – the celibacy, you know. I’m pretty sure the only reason we’re friends today is because I put the kibosh on the X-rating that night.

There has been a lot of speculation over the years about why the more exotic parts of my life are riddled with hockey players, and contrary to the theory put out there by the anti-fans, it has nothing to do with going to hockey games to pick up players. Some have said it has something to do with athletes and their high levels of Testosterone, and how I don’t look like I’d snap if (when) they bent me over, and therefore, subconsciously, they want to “breed” with me. OK… Whatever it is, I’m sure I’d find it depressing if I wasn’t already so far gone with the whole over-independence, perma-single thing.

Anyway, back to my story. Four years of refusing to compromise on my no hockey player rule, and four years of running from every decent guy that asked me on a second date dragged on, and on, and on. I was hurting. I was needy. And I started to wonder why I wasted pretty much my entire university career with my lack of whorishness and sticky sheets. I mean everyone but me was going wild in college, right?! Finally, I met the object of my surrender. And, wouldn’t you know it was a hockey player. Safety. Someone I could “use” to get my groove back with no fear of having to get serious, think about the future, all that grown up stuff. He wasn’t really a hockey player by my standards. Central League, which basically put him on the grey picket fence that divides the hockey players from the non. He was a babe-o-rama. One of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen. Maybe even the only 11 I’ve ever known. I was terrrrriiiiifffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiieddddd. I had completely psyched myself out about sex – four years of celibacy will do that to anyone, I imagine. But I had to have him. We met at the tail end of the offseason a week before he was off to Texas. It didn’t happen then. Yeah, right. Like I would have gone home from a bar with a random guy. We kept in touch, though, so, when he came home 8 months later I was as ready as I was ever going to be, and it was a very memorable evening. Hockey player #2 and I were 18 at the time, in fact, I was probably his good luck charm the night before he left for the NHL Entry Draft ahem, so now I was nearly 22, and the last guy I had been with was an 18 year old. Yeah, I was prepared for Mr. 26 – NOT! He was more man than I could handle. He was all filled out unlike the super-lean OHL players I was previously accustomed to. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES!

So where do I go from this part of the story? After my Texas sized fling, I became much less strict about my rules, until eventually (Korea) I threw them all out the window. It’s weird, but it seems that I can only have a normal love life when I’m away from the real world as I know it. In Korea there were no hockey players (the easy option), and so I had to let my guard down with the non-hockey players lest I shrivel up and die. You don’t take your affairs seriously over here, so you leave yourself vulnerable for feelings to emerge and things to happen out of nowhere. That’s what happened with the American. He was supposed to be birthday sex, and look what a mess that turned into. And if anything that stung worse than anything any hockey player had ever done to me.

The American was probably what put me over the threshold to what I now worry is some sort of spinoff sex addiction. I decided I liked my life for the most part. I liked being in the driver’s seat. I liked going where I wanted, when I wanted. I liked not having to deal with difficult feelings. I liked having the freedom to fuck up my life and not have to worry about how it affects someone else. The only thing that keeps me from being totally independent is my dangerous dependency on the magic stick. If I wasn’t always so preoccupied with it, I’d probably be fine with not having any man at all. It’s the appendage I want, not the man it’s attached to.

I like to tell myself that I do things the right way. There’s Plan A and Plan B as I call them. Plan A is when I go out on a date with a guy, and he seems to be doing things the gentlemanly way. You know, getting to know me first, and such. Then there’s Plan B, when I end up on the date with said guy, and he drops hints at what he’s really after. Plan B gets the pass, if I’m up for it, obviously. It’s not like I just screw anything that moves – yet – talk to me after another 3 months of Japan and its unnecessarily long showers. It seems logical and reasonable, does it not? Sadly, I’d be lying if I said over that last couple years Plan B wasn’t really Plan A. Why get into a messy relationship, when there’s only one thing I need from him? Yes, it’s a problem. You should worry about me. Pray for me. Commit me. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m a lost cause or if I just haven’t met the right guy, hmm, no, if I just haven’t allowed the right guy to show me the way out of the dark red haze that clouds my eyes and stains everything like blood or wine.

I’ve had several things that I wanted to say about the puck bunny culture over the last few months, but due to an onslaught of hockey games, I’ve put it off. So, before I embark upon publishing the details of my trip to Tampa, I’m going to talk a bit about hockey players, and their relationships with women, both puck bunnies and non.

It’s no secret that of all female hockey bloggers/writers, I’m probably the one that bears the brunt of the hatred for being “nothing more than a puck bunny.” Truthfully, I don’t care what other people think, but occasionally, if my mood and hormones are just so, some of these arguments will offend me. I’m often treated like a pariah because I chose to put myself out there not as an aspiring hockey writer, but just as a girl that loves hockey and the culture of the game enough to travel the world to experience it. Every trip that I go on is for pleasure, not business, and so when I travel to LA, or Boston, or Zurich, or Seoul, I’m there to enjoy my game experience, and not worry about what I should write about later so that I look professional and not like “just another puck bunny.” I write about hockey culture. I always have, and I always will. I have no aspirations to cover hockey in a “professional” capacity for the mainstream media, unless it was to use my own voice and angle to talk about the things that I talk about here. I don’t run this site to prove that I know more about hockey than anyone else. As my little blurb at the top of the page says, this is simply my story.

Anyway, I don’t really want this blog post to be in defense of me or my work. I always say that if I’m “just a puck bunny,” then I’m not a very good one. I’ve never denied being involved with a hockey player. It happens from time to time. The truth about my personal life is pretty uninspiring. In fact, I expect you to feel bad for me, dammit! I can count the number of girl friends that I have on one hand, and of those few, only one lives in Toronto. When I go out, I go out with my guy friends, which generally means that I’m being cock blocked 24/7 unless I’m on my own. I meet people usually within my little Psycho world of hockey. Hockey is my world, and the hockey community is my social circle. Therefore, my romantic ties generally spring from this pool, just like how you probably meet people through work, or school, or places you volunteer. I meet hockey players, management, and fans all the time, and just like with any guy, sometimes I like them and sometimes I don’t. The funny thing is that some of the female bloggers and writers that have you all fooled because they don’t talk about it, are the raging puck bunnies that are taking down 23 man rosters… of ECHL teams I might add. If you want my personal definition of a puck bunny, that’s it. A true “puck slut” is out to simply get as many players under her belt as she can. And while I have entertained multiple players over the past ten years, I am personally proud to say that I have never gotten involved with two guys on the same team. Truthfully, I think it’s mean, but maybe it’s also because (with the odd exception of a VERY drunken tryst or two) I’ve actually liked the hockey players I have known enough not to disrespect them in that way. I wouldn’t try to get involved with an ex’s best friend or brother, so why would I do that to a guy because he plays hockey? Does he not have feelings? Does he not get hurt? Because he plays hockey, if you cut him, does he not bleed?

The hockey player, to me, has always been a bit of a tragic figure. On the one hand, he appears to be living the life every good little Canadian boy has grown up wanting for himself. He gets paid money to play hockey, drive nice cars, sit in the VIP section, and bang the “hottest” girls. However, on the other hand, there appears to be an internal struggle for a lot of them about being used by puck bunnies, groupies, and gold diggers. Logically, and on paper, the mantra seems to be that the three aforementioned classifications of women are undesirable. No one really wants to be used, right? But, at the same time, that fragile hockey ego needs to know that these women are after him because it’s a measure of his success on the ice. The worse the player is on the ice, the more he clings to these types of women off the ice. This is probably why so many hockey players seem to date the same type of girl: 15 lbs underweight, fake boobs, 200+ pairs of shoes, etc, etc; the trophy they know is only with them for their fame and money, but serves her purpose to act as an everyday reminder that they have achieved greatness in some way.

When I was younger, the trophy WAG was a major source of my own insecurities in my affairs with hockey players. Once I started to develop my own feelings, I quickly started over-examining myself, and fretting about how he won’t ever be as happy with me as he would be with any of those “models,” etc, because I’ll never be one. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking physically. I mean it’s not like I couldn’t devote my life to the gym, get a boob job, nose job, or whatever other plastic surgery society has decided I need, and look just like any other trophy-bikini model out there. Mentally, however, I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not saying that money or fame is a bad thing, but I’m not looking for someone to buy me things. I hate shopping. I hate having too many things because it’s too much to pack when I inevitably uproot my life and move. So, I can’t really get my head around a material relationship, though I will say that free hockey tickets is a nice perk. The sad thing is that I felt that these specific guys needed that girl in order to feel truly happy and successful, and to positively influence their social status. Whether I was wrong and being completely paranoid and ridiculous, I don’t know, but as a result I don’t take any hockey player that comes into my life seriously anymore, which is unfortunate because they are just people, and deserve a fair shot, too.

Don’t get my wrong, I’m not trying to say that hockey players will never meet any girl that truly loves them. In fact, the notion that only puck bunnies sleep with hockey players offends me for just that reason. If sex is the only factor defining puck bunnies (as people commonly misunderstand), then no hockey player has ever been with a non-puck bunny, which I think is an unfair and offensive thing to say about guys that play hockey, as it suggests that these guys can only attract women “professionally” and not personably. So, it’s kind of funny when the jock sniffers and super fans go around wagging the finger of puck bunnyness at any girl associated with any player in any capacity, because by labeling the females in his life, they are indirectly belittling him, the hockey god, as a human being.

Anyway, I don’t really know the point of this post today. If nothing else, it has served its purpose as an outlet to rant a little bit. I guess my point is that the people that hate on “puck bunnies” and hockey players for their involvement with them, need to step back for a while and remember that at some point we all came from the same place. There was a time in all of our lives when we couldn’t tie up our own skates, or sit still through an entire hockey game without consistently kicking the seat of the guy in front of us. We’ve all had our first bike, hockey jersey, and kiss. And I would hope that someday whether you’re a hockey player or a garbage man, a puck bunny or a cat lady, that you have all touched success, happiness, and real love as only you define it.

OK, so I don’t know who the bitch at Playboy is that decided to publish that, “Of all athletes, hockey players make the best lovers,” but she clearly has never screwed one before. P.S. You’re ruining my life, woman!!! Like those regular Baldwin types, who have never had to try hard with the ladies, hockey players don’t get an A for effort in the sack. Earth to hockey guys: I’ve got a purse full of gold stars, but you ain’t gettin’ one! Maybe these guys are just super douchey when it comes to girls, but I’d like to think that hockey players just have a hard time separating their sex lives from their hockey lives. I mean, I’m fucking awesome, so it’s definitely them and NOT me! So, here’s my quick Sex 101 for hockey players. Learn from it, or the next time I see one of you pucks naked, I’m going to kick you in the neck with my six inch stripper heels!

#1 Brassieres must be completely undone (usually from the back), and not simply pulled over her head like a jersey.

#9 Watch where you’re aiming! She’s not wearing a protective visor!

I know, right?! You’d think this would be pretty fucking self-explanatory! Well, apparently, it’s not! I hope you can learn from my teachings, as I tried my best to write them in a language that even the most concussed hockey guy can understand! Now go forth, young Jedi, and pleasure your women! Don’t worry, you’re still allowed to slap her on the ass if you think she did well! Puck bunnies everywhere, you’re welcome!

xo Bambi

I’d like to think that the All-star Game came from pure origins; that the NHL sincerely wanted to honour the best in show, and wanted to give the fans an opportunity to see the League’s brightest compete on the same ice, together, for sixty minutes. However, fast track to the year 2011, and the All-star selection seems to matter less and less to not only the players, but the fans as well. With fans voting in mass to try to get the 23rd man onto the roster because they like his tweets, for example, goes against everything that this event should stand for – if it stands for anything anymore. Some of the players themselves, in the age of the hockey player/Playboy model courtship, seem almost upset that they have to cancel their vacation plans with their flavour (of implants) of the month, and actually attend an event honouring their achievements!

Perhaps interest in the All-star Weekend was beginning to wane on multiple levels, and the NHL had finally taken notice. Somehow I doubt it, though, I mean what else are hockey fans going to be watching when the All-star gimmicks are the only thing on TV for the puck obsessed? However, for whatever reason the League decided that the 2011 All-star Weekend needed more gimmicks than ever! And since this was apparently the highest viewed All-star Weekend in 13 years, y’all fell for it! We saw mock drafts… well you saw, I actually refused to watch the whole shebang for one foul reason – the NHL Guardian Project *cringe!*

The Guardian Project offends me on multiple levels as a purist. Sure, it’s kind of cool that Stan Lee created some team inspired superheroes – KIND of. Why the names all included, “The,” I’ll never know. One of them must be a copyright infringement on a legit comic book figure, because I think we can all agree that Coyote, Blue, or Hurricane sound a lot better when you drop the T-H-E! And, no, the terrible names are not the reason the project offends me as a whole – although it doesn’t help the matter! No, the NHL Guardian Project offends me because in my ideal universe of hockey there is no room for laser eyes and super powers. Perhaps it is a bit deluded, but I still try to hold onto a time when hockey teams didn’t need a make believe superhero because they already had 22 of them dressed for battle with their weapons in hand, who were always ready to defend the honour of the fans and the city each and every time a worthy adversary rolled into town. However, I suppose when hockey players started trying to act like rockstars with their “models,” and shopping sprees, and fake tans, we all stopped trying to see them as the heroes they could have been. The League is definitely in need of some brand new superheroes these days, but a couple fancy cartoons is not what the doctor ordered.