And now to Charlotte, N.C., Queen of the Frozen South, and also kings of irony, at least until Our Only Available President fires off his next spasm of Twitter buffoonery.
Charlotte, it seems, canceled a hockey game because of ... winter.
OK, so it didn't cancel it. It only canceled the fans, which is why the AHL's Charlotte Checkers played in an empty arena.
This happened because Charlotte got six inches of snow and ice, a normal winter's day up where most of the Checkers call home. Charlotte all but shutting down because of it must have been highly amusing to them, but, being hockey players -- generally the most polite athletes on earth away from the rink -- none of them openly laughed, or even snickered behind their hands in public. About the most extreme reaction any of them had was that it was definitely a weird experience.
Still, you can just imagine the inner eye-rolling. The South, as we all know, simply doesn't do winter. This is why so many people who've spent their lives doing winter move there. If they wanted to shovel snow and stand in line at the grocery store for bread and milk, they'd have stayed in Holy (Bleep) It's Cold, Minn., or Maybe We'll Tunnel Out In The Spring, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo.
So, yes, we all get it. Yet it's deliciously amusing. Hockey fans, after all, glory in their toughness. That's why they'll gladly bundle up in parkas and toques to watch the Winter Classic on New Year's Day, when two NHL teams play outdoors as a testament to the heartiness of hockey's roots. Six inches of snow and ice? Shoot, isn't that why you have a Zamboni?
Perhaps the Checkers should have loaned the city of Charlotte theirs. 'Tis a thought.
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