10 Most Ridiculous Ways NHL Players and Personnel Are Spending Their Lockout

Most NHL players can take a stick salute for at least staying heavily involved in their sport and generating relevant headlines in the midst of the month-old lockout. Whether they are playing in other leagues or working with amateurs, they are using literally the best means available to sustain their game shape and sustain the game’s shape from a PR perspective.

With that being said, there is no substitute for authentic NHL action beginning in October and running through June on an annual basis. An absence of such newsworthy activity in the appropriate time frame inevitably leaves open a few seams that are plugged, shall we say, unconventionally.

For proof, look no further than the sidebars some players and team personnel are percolating with their gap-filling, off-ice activity at a time when training camp, and now the regular season, should have been underway.

So far, the 10 most absurd means of passing the lockout that have garnered a little of the limelight are as follows.

Krys Barch

Through a protracted protest against the lockout on his Twitter account, Barch made those who wouldn't know better think he is an aspiring prose poet of sorts. And I thought Alan Ginsberg had a wildly mind-blowing style of writing.

Kevin Bieksa

Besides promoting an informal scrimmage during an appearance on local television, the Vancouver Canucks defenseman stood in as a meteorologist.

Or, he tried to, anyway. Looks like reading the superimposed map proved a tad more challenging and required more help than, say, initiating a routine breakout from the defensive end.

David Booth

A well-documented hunting enthusiast, Booth has had more time to pursue his secondary type of big game and to self-publicize his accomplishments.

If he is not given the OK to don Canucks garb again soon enough, Booth could be churning out installments for a show fit for the NHL’s U.S. cable abode when it was known as the Outdoor Life Network.

Matt Cooke

Even with his efforts to clean up his hockey game over the last couple of seasons, Cooke is still difficult to picture in the same setting as a host of soccer moms.

Yet that is quite literally the crowd he has been seen with of late, as the Pittsburgh Penguins forward recently talked about coaching his daughter’s youth team.

Mike Fisher

As his schedule suddenly cracked open, the seasoned Nashville Predator showed up unannounced at his country-singing wife Carrie Underwood’s show in Atlanta.

Not a real shocker, all things considered, but of all locations on Underwood’s tour for him to visit, why did it have to be Atlanta? Talk about a lapse in decision making.

As if there were not enough anguish being dished up among the 30 current NHL fanbases indefinitely lacking hockey action.

Fisher naturally meant well, but his presence may have inevitably poked the sore scars of a city barely 16 months removed from losing its second major league hockey franchise.

Marcus Johansson

Fisher has company in the way of NHL players interacting with musicians with some of their bonus spare time.

Around the time when they ordinarily would have been focusing the bulk of their time and energy on training camp, Johansson went with Washington farmhand Mattias Sjogren to a recent Madonna concert at the Verizon Center.

Apparently, though, merely being in their normal domain was not enough. The concert-going Capitals could not wait for their indefinitely delayed season to take a more active role in an event at the arena.

In turn, they volunteered their services when Madonna asked for a bystander’s inscription on her back.

Sjogren has since commenced an AHL campaign for the Hershey Bears, so at least there’s that for him.

Shawn Matthias

How powerful is NHL commissioner Gary Bettman? Apparently enough to, with the click of a lock on 30 venues, make some of the ostensibly larger-than-life players in his league tumble down to the status of a young Joe Schmo facing trying vocational circumstances.

The 24-year-old Matthias can attest to that. He boldly confessed to the Belleville Intelligencer that “I’m back home living with my parents in Toronto—in the basement.”

Although, he has not ruled out seeking temporary employment with an overseas team if the CBA-centered progress does not satisfy him. 

New Jersey Devils employees

It seems knocking off the top-dog and border rival New York Rangers in the last Eastern Conference Finals was either insufficient or has worn off as lockout-induced withdrawal sets in.

With its on-ice figures out of commission, the top headlines from the Devils circles revolve around an endeavor to emulate another Manhattan-based entity.

Per the Sports Business Journal and republished on the team’s website, team employee John Bochiaro proclaimed that his office is percolating its “version of ‘Saturday Night Live.’”

Daniel and Henrik Sedin

The ridiculous aspect is not the fact that the Sedin twins raise racehorses (they and Eddie Olczyk have much to discuss).

Rather, it is the fact that they are talking to the Vancouver Sun about it during the second week of October. After all, from mid-September onward, the topic should be how they and the Canucks are hoping to finally translate their regular-season success to the playoffs.

Max Talbot

Talbot is way ahead of the aforementioned Booth as far as flaunting another kind of shooting skill through social media is concerned. He is also leaving little room for doubt that he is thoroughly committed to promoting one of his favorite video games.