Things you could do while awaiting a west coast puck drop

As the Hurricanes head out on a three game, west coast road trip against Vancouver, San Jose and Phoenix - all of us East coast players are doomed to staying up until at least 12:30 at night just to see the team on TV. With a 10:00 start, you might find yourself getting just a tad anxious for the game. With that being said - be glad that we here at COI are by the people, for the people, of the people and we're here to keep you occupied while you anticipate your Pacific time zone game.

Here's some things that I'll be doing and maybe you should try too:

You could drink a beer or twelve.

You could step on over to the new and improved Canes Country via the ever expanding SB Nation. Congrats to Bubba and Cory who are professionals at this game by now.

You could drink a Smithwick's. Dark, smooth, yet not too heavy.

You could scope out the competition's bloggers, with my personal favorites being Waiting for Stanley on the Canucks end, Five for Howing for all your Coyotes action and Fear the Fin is great for the Sharks. Also including the Sharkies is one of my all time favorite blogs - the Battle of California. Earl Sleek (even though he's a Ducks fan) is one of the most free-thinking, creative and entertaining hockey bloggers out there today. His twisted mind is on par with only a select few in the elite of the blogosphere. Here's a favorite from his series of "Pucktoons" with Sir Sleek:

You could drink a Fat Tire, if you're anywhere in the Nashville area or further West. What a great MF beer. (For the longest time you couldn't get the Colorado brewed beer anywhere East of the Mississippi. If it hits NC and you find out, let me know and the first rounds on me.)

You could congratulate East of Here on the birth of his first born this week! While he's obviously not going to be around here too much in the coming months if at all - enjoy a little collection of the best of East's twisted mind:

The Professional Chotchkes Union Must Be On Strike East breaks down the Eric Staal bobblehead

About those shoddy Hurricanes car flags they tried to skimp on

We're boned, seriously: regarding East's assurance that the return of Paul Maurice meant the inevitable return of dump and chase (as well as being teh Suck).

Congrats again there, bud.

You could drink an Eye of the Hawk beer. Strong at 8% but the copper, amber color with the caramelly (is that a word?) flavor take the edge off. Good stuff. It's kinda fun to start squawking like you're some giant bird of prey while you drink this too.

You could check out the qual that my cohorts have been spewing over at Barry Melrose Rocks, or view only posts written by yours truly if you must. I also highly recommend the author's thread of Kevin Schultz at the NHL Fanhouse for AOL Sports.

With Mardi Gras right around the corner, you could appropriately drink a "Hurricane". Duh.
You could rip some bingers swim like an Olympic champ.

You could check out my favorite new blog, F You, Penguin. An excerpt:

"This jerk refuses to be my friend"

"What the hell, Dog? Like I'm not good enough for you. I have 6,000 friends on Facebook! YOU'RE NOT EVEN ON FACEBOOK BECAUSE YOUR PAWS WOULD MAKE TYPING IMPOSSIBLY AWKWARD. What am I doing wrong here? We hung out that one time, and I thought things were going pretty well. I made some jokes, you ate your own poop, WE HAD A NICE DAY TOGETHER."

You could go and drink dozens of different beers at any of the Carolina Ale House locations, with the Cary location on Walnut St. hosting a Cool Bars with the Storm Squad there on Saturday night for the Phoenix game.

You could also head on up to Hillsborough to check out the UNC vs. Duke hockey game on Saturday. It starts at 4:15. Guarantee you that one will be a chippy affair. Let's just hope that you staying up so late is warranted by a Hurricanes team worth watching. That is - they don't ride west only to crap the bed in a different time zone.

The First Annual C.O.I. Awards Banquet!

Well, the NHL season is officially over. So what's there to talk about? Not much, I guess. The draft is coming up, but I'm just not ready to get all into that yet. "Why not?", you may ask. Well, it's because there's something more important that we must do first.You see, the NHL awards banquet just happened and there were plenty of awards and accolades to be handed out. Sure, we all knew that the Ovenchicken would get plenty of trophies. And we knew that Lidtrom would get some hardware. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Because, as you may not know, there is one more awards event that doesn't get nearly as much publicity as it should: It is our very own Carolina On Ice [TM] Awards.

Yes, the Wuff and I have been busy nominating and voting on those very special players who, in our eyes, deserve recognition for those qualities that make them special. The votes have been cast. The numbers have been tallied (nearly every award was won by a vote count of 2-0). And the results are in. So without further ado, I give you the first annual C.O.I. Awards!

You've all heard of the "Lester Pearson" award, which is given to the top player as selected by the NHLPA. Well, at C.O.I., we have the "Mo Lester Person" Award:

It is given to the player with the worst mullet. Since this is the inaugural year, we decided that this award should not be limited to the current year, but should go to the worst mullet in all of the hockey historical record. To set a benchmark, of sorts. So, without further ado, the winner is: [drumroll please]

Jaromir Jagr! Yes, there were some other truly deserving mullets out there to choose from. But when I realized that he was a dead ringer for 2/3 of the girls in my (mid '80's) high school yearbooks, I knew we had our winner. Nice bangs, jackass...

Ahem... Moving on, you are no doubt familiar with the "Masterson" Award, which the NHL gives to the player who illustrates perserverence to the sport of hockey. Well, we here at C.O.I. have commissioned the "Bastard Son" Award. It could only go to one person this year: Sean Avery.

Now, the "BS" Award is not given for perserverence. Rather, it is for the person who thinks he is a hot dog; but is instead, merely a weiner. I'd post a picture of Mr. Avery, but why would I do that to our loyal readers? I wouldn't.

Now, our next award may take a little explaining. As you all know, the "Vezina" trophy is always given to Martin Brodeur. Or at least it seems that way lately. Anyway, it is for the best goaltender. However, here at C.O.I., instead of the "Vezina" award, we give the "Vagina" award:

It goes to the biggest [well, you know...] in the NHL. We fought over this award (both the design and the winner) long and hard [pun fully intended]. We agreed relatively quickly, that the winner would be Jack "I won't play for Carolina" Johnson. But we couldn't agree on what form the trophy should take. I wanted a golden baby. Wuff wanted a golden kitten. But then, we compromised on a vibrator. It only made sense, as Johnson and the vibrator both have something in common. They are both stuck up twats.

The next NHL award that is near and dear to Caniacs is the "Selke" Award, which is given to the best defensive forward. Our very own Rod Brind'amour has dominated this award lately. But here at C.O.I., we have the "Sucky" award. Also known as the Lindy Ruff Award. It goes to the whiniest, most annoying bitch in hockey:

This year's award goes to Olli Jokinen; for his outstanding achievement in the art of whining about diving. In fact, his whining act was so good this year, it actually affected the officiating in at least one game, and maybe two. The balloting for this award wasn't even close. Ole Whiny Jokinen's crying was so good/bad this year, we nearly went ahead and gave it to him for next year as well. But we didn't, because we figured he'd whine about that too, if we did.

The NHL also gives out the "Norris" Trophy. This goes to the best Defenseman in the league. What do we here at C.O.I. think? Big whoop. Who cares about Pronger, Chara, Lidstrom, some other random mutant, ... etc. They've got nothing on Chad Larose - the winner of C.O.I.'s "Chuck Norris" Trophy:

But be careful Chad, the Chuck Norris Trophy must be kept seperate from any other trophies. It has been known to eat them, and crap little aluminum bullets. It is that bad ass...

And last, but certainly not least... There is another NHL award that is closely connected with the Hurricanes. It is the "Lady Byng" award for gentlemanly play. Ronnie Francis has a couple of these in his collection. But we just couldn't bring ourselves to reward gentlemanly play. Rather, we thought we'd come up with an award for work ethic. But being motivated slackers, we decided it'd be more appropriate if we came up with an award not for work ethic; but rather a lack thereof. An award for the player that best exemplifies the attitude of "I don't care if my save percentage is lower than Roger Clemens' batting average; I'm skipping practice and heading to the strip club!" So, we created the "Bada Byng" Award.

And this year's winner is: [dramatic music please]

The Russian League's newest backup goalie - John Grahame!

So anyways, thank you for tuning in for this special presentation of the first Annual C.O.I. Awards Banquet. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Be sure to tune in next week when Wuffy comes back from vacation and realizes that I've posted both a picture of a vibrator and the word "twat" in the same post. Mayhem ensues...