General Body Soreness, South Park and an Extremely Manly Man Oozing of Manliness

Esteemed reader/commenter/blogger Ryan, from the Victoria Times (an awfully nice bunch of people who probably have cheeky and fun Minnesotan accents don’tcha know), checked in the other day. Asks Ryan:

Why do people associated with hockey, players, coaches, management, etc. always say that someone is sick with a “flu bug.”? Is this the only ailment players ever get? And why not just say that someone has the flu? Why do they have to say “flu bug”? When Elias was out with hepatitis, I was expecting Brian Engblom to say he has a touch of the flu bug of the liver. Can you clear this up for me?

It’s a confusing thing that the NHL, and really all sports, have going on right now. Every where you look there’s teams completely making up injury reports to keep their opponents off balance. For example, I do believe that Patrice Bergeron is currently out with a severe flu of the skull (too soon?). Today, “injury secrecy” is the name of the game in all sports. We see it in football all the time (see: Bill Belichick) and it has found its way into hockey more and more. If you want to be serious, last season Rick DiPietro had a nasty collision with Montreal’s Steve Begin. I don’t have the video handy, but it was pretty obvious that DiPietro suffered a concussion or some sort of head/neck injury. The Islanders announced that DP had “stiffness in his neck” and “general body soreness”. And no, that isn’t a joke. That being said, the flu bug is hitting hard everywhere. The reason why I didn’t post this weekend was because I had “general body laziness” with a touch of the “weakass flu.”

Another medical related question. My brother and I were watching a game a while back, and Manny Fernandez went down in pain, and the color guy said it looked like he “tweaked his knee”. What does a tweak feel like? My brother and I envisioned Manny screaming “TWEAK!! TWEAK!!” in uncontrollable agony as he rolled around on the ice. Is this what happens?

Actually, I think a tweak is something more like this. That little creature pops out of a person, kind of like a creepy alien sci-fi movie, whenever someone ‘tweaks’ a muscle. The darn thing is just so small, not to mention 2D, so it can be hard to see. Marian Gaborik is actually chronically plagued by the tweak.

My third and final question: Do you wish you looked like George Parros? I do.

George Parros is an absolutely ridiculous looking human being. He’s about one long beard away from being the NHL’s version of Johnny Damon. Right now, he’s like a bad guy from Zorro. Even worse, he also looks like he would fit in perfectly on either a 1970’s baseball team or adult movie. I can’t say I envy him for any of that, but I would imagine the ladies love him.

And the best part of all this — take a look at the picture accompanying this post and imagine Parros yelling “I am all that is man and you will bow to my MAN-stache!!” It’s uncanny, really.
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