Carolina? I spear you!

So I see we're playing Carolina tonight, thanks to my fabulous Rexall Place "Game Day" calendar I bought whilst we spent Christmas with the in-laws. (I hear one can also garner such information on the inter-webs, but I prefer this method, which allows me to look at a "candidly" posed Ethan Moreau while I do so.)

Effing Carolina and "Joe Camel" Brindamour. Even if he wasn't excessively unpleasant to look at, I'd have a grudge. We watched most of the 2006 playoffs with friends in Chicago (where we were living at the time) and totalled 2 transplanted Oilers fans, 1 newbie Oilers fan (me) and 2 transplanted Leafs fans (cheering for the Canadian team, natch) at our little gatherings. It was nice. Orange food, orange beer (well, bottle labels and caps anyway): we had a theme going. One of those themes was "spearing" the opposition with handy utensils, in symbolic effigy as it were. This is when I learned that women (myself included) are much louder, angrier, and more deranged hockey spectators in polite company than the men are. This did not displease me.

In the midst of the Cup final, my transplanted Oilers fan and I got married, and that evening, as we watched Game 6, I promised the hockey gods that if the Oilers won the Cup, I would show sufficient gratitude by finding an old-school MacT jersey and wearing it to our later wedding reception in Alberta instead of any kind of "dress".

So I blame Carolina for my just about freezing my rear off in a stupid sundress out near St. Paul that August.