Scorchstack Issue #64- Oilers fans are to blame for the wave
Matthew and Brady are both menaces to society and should never be allowed to do pranks.
If you were to tell me that Sean Monahan did not play last game I would have believed you. Does Sean Monahan actually exist?
What’s inside?
It’s been so long since the Flames last won a shootout to the point where ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶o̶p̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶.̶ Floob has lost all sense of time.
Juuso Välimäki is scratched from this issue just like he is from the Flames’ lineup.
Brady and Matthew Tkachuk radiate some polarizing energies and Ramz takes a look at those differences to see which prank from the show New Girl that each brother would do.
As always, Edmonton brings forth evil, poisoning the Saddledome with it in the most despicable way yet: the wave. (ed. note: *shudders*)
Christian is here to tell you that Instagram still creates the greatest T-shirt ads on the planet and has found a gold mine of some truly spectacular Flames-related threads.
Since last issue
ScorchstackIssue #63 was released and it was filled with wonderful tales of the Flames embarrassing the Islanders each time they open a brand new arena, with Brad Richardson doing his best Morris Stefaniw impression.
Big Monday Thing comes out and continues to be a massive hit, highlighting just exactly why the Jets have to ruin everything for the Flames
‘90s night happened at the dome and for once, the Flames had a perfect goal song. Shame it’s never going to happen again.
What Was Life Like Back When The Flames Last Won A Shootout?
Life before bingbong and TikTok, was there ever such a thing?
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
This past Monday night, the Flames took on the Pittsburgh Penguins in front of an almost 80% full Scorchiabank Saddledome, ending an abbreviated homestand in which the home team skated away with a 2-1 victory.
What was peculiar about the win was how it happened: Mikael Backlund - perfect, perfect Mikael Backlund - roofed a perfectly placed wrist shot out of the reach of an outstretched Tristan Jarry, which proved to be the winning goal in a shootout over the Penguins, which I’m acutely aware of because as it was happening, I was repeatedly remarking to myself that I was watching a shootout. Furthermore, it was one that the Flames took the W. I know our memories are fuzzier these days on account of kid spend day look at phone, but that felt rare to me. So I decided to look into it.
Indeed, the last time your Calgary Flames found themselves in a showdown akin to the one they participated in on Monday, you have to dial the way back machine all the way to March 7th of last year, a 4-3 heartbreaker loss to the powerhouse Ottawa Senators. No one should feel bad about that, of course, the Sens were an unbreakable behemoth in 2020, and even taking them to the ‘extra’ extra frame is an accomplishment in itself.
(ed note: this shootout happened this year, not in 2020, but Floob worked so hard on this piece so we wanted to keep it, so just pretend he was right. We respect our elders at Scorchstack. He’s also not answering us in the group chat because he’s “working”).
But the last time the team found themselves in a shootout and won it the real way instead of just the moral victory way, well you have to crawl back a couple weeks earlier to February 1st, with Calgary winning a 4-3 nail biter against the Winnipeg Jets in whatever the hell stadium it is the Jets play out of.
It’s not near an airport, I’ll tell you what.
February 2020, that is a billion years ago. Can you remember what life was like back then? No, you can’t, no one can. I thought I’d do some research into some of the big hits and trends from back in those days, and see what kind of quaint nostalgia it whips up in the process. What kind of phones were we using back then? How many Gs did they have? I think the answer might blow us away. Let’s find out together.
The top song on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 1st, 2020 was The Box by Roddy Ricch. My word. This was so long ago we were still using antiquated Ye Olde English spellings like Ricch. This was back when people still used boxes, apparently. Were we ever that young?
The number #1 movie at the box office on that day was Bad Boys For Life, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. I swear to Kipper that movie came out in the mid-’90s. And it might as well have, it came out in February of 2020, after all. I mean when was the last time you saw Will Smith in anything? Is Martin Lawrence even alive?
At the top of the New York Times Bestseller book list was Mercy, by David Baldacci. Mercy is the 4th book in the Atlee Pine series, and in it, Atlee discovers her twin sister was abducted when they were six years old. I don’t have anything for this.
Checking the news that day, it seems as if U.S. Senators voted against hearing witnesses at the Donald Trump Presidential impeachment trial. Blink and you’ll miss it, but back then, “The Donald” was indeed the President of the United States of America. Isn’t that just the cutest thing you’ve ever heard?
Ontario confirmed its 3rd coronavirus patient on this day. The coronavirus? The CORONAVIRUS? If that’s a virus, the cure is hey get me another dang Corona! That joke is going to kill at my open mic set.
The Coquihalla Highway closes due to excess flooding and road debris. Ah, well; wonder what that’s like.
Liam Neeson was spotted filming a new project out in Winnipeg, the same city that sat idly by and helplessly witnessed the Calgary Flames pull out a shootout victory over the hometown Jets on that very night. (ed. note: please, let’s all still pretend this is factually correct. Time is an illusion, there is no real difference between 2020 and 2021)
As for who was in that game, well, I can tell you that Sean Monahan scored the first shootout goal for Calgary, something I can hardly believe myself given how he rotated between invisible and dogshit the other night against the Penguins. Johnny Gaudreau would cement the victory three skaters down the list, tucking one past Connor Hellebuyck, after Flames starter Jacob Markström denied Mathieu Perreault in a start that occurred before the injury that ruined his entire season, and subsequently, the entire season for the Flames. (ed. note: you would think that the fact that Markström only signed with the Flames in October of 2020 would have tipped dear ol’ Floob off, but alas)
Andrew Mangiapane scored his first goal of the campaign, while Juuso Välimäki notched an assist, kickstarting two trends we see so consistently playing out still to this day. And the Flames dressed names from yesteryear like Nesterov, Bennett, Leivo, Nordstrom, Ryan, and something called a Giordano, while head coach Geoff Ward...wait, that doesn’t sound right, someone must have taken liberties on that one. No way Geoff Ward was ever made the head coach. (ed. note: on Feb. 1 2020, the Flames lost to the Edmonton Oilers 8-3. It is understandable why Floob would want to forget this. Geoff Ward was still the coach though, bewilderingly)
Yes, this game feels like it occurred in a far-off world several millennia ago. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. To demonstrate this, I will end this piece by picking a tweet I wrote on February 1st that best exemplifies the spirit we’re trying to embody here:
??? Nailed it? (ed.s note: Nailed it.)
I went through Winston from New Girl's pranks to determine if each prank was more Matthew or Brady
♫ Who’s that girl? (Who’s that girl?) It’s Ramz! ♫
by Ramz (@ramzreboot)
If you listened in on Overtime 2 on Monday this week, which if you didn’t you’re fake, we talked about Matthew and Brady Tkachuk as one does. We talked about the biting incident (of course) which led to us talking about how Brady has huge younger sibling vibes (we know he’s a middle child) and how we’re shocked Brady wasn’t the one doing the biting. Then I told an anecdote of my cousin sitting on his younger sister’s face when we were young kids and he’d fart on her. Shockingly, she never got pink eye. We said how this is definitely Matthew and Taryn.
This led to us discussing the types of pranks Matthew and Brady would pull which also led to the discussion of this Tweet:
Now here we are, talking about Prank Sinatra aka Winston Bishop from New Girl. If you’ve never watched New Girl, Winston was known for being horrible at pranks. Either going way too big or way too small. Here’s an example:
Which of Winston’s pranks is more Matthew and which is more Brady? Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you about. As we see from the Tweet above, they’re both menaces but Matthew is truly evil.
I won’t be going through all of Winston’s pranks as there are too many and also I couldn’t find them all by Googling “Winston’s pranks from New Girl” so you’ll get what I give you.
Let’s start with the video we just watched.
Registering someone as a sex offender/putting a blueberry in your roommate’s cereal
Surprisingly, Brady is both. Neither one of Matthew or Brady seem intelligent, but Brady seems less so. I don’t think he’d understand the real-life implications of registering someone as a sex offender as a prank. But he’d also think putting blueberries in someone’s cereal is extremely funny when it isn’t. Such a middle child.
Pouring juice near a shoe/ Hitting someone in the throat with a ski
I don’t have a clip for this but this is like that clip above where it’s a flashback, in that in his pranks he either goes way too small (flashback to Winston saying, “Hey, let’s pour a little juice near her shoe”) or he goes way too big (flashback to Winston saying, “Hey, let’s hit her in the throat with a ski”)
The juice is Brady, the ski is Matthew.
Getting Rhonda’d
This is again, most likely Brady. This is something he would do with Taryn to his parents, but only after offering Taryn $500,000 as I don’t think she’s as unhinged as her brothers.
Dropping a badger on a priest
Winston wanted to prank a wedding by dropping a badger on a priest. Definitely Matthew. He’s insane. You don’t need to watch this whole clip (unless you want to, I’m not your mom).
Shooting a bear full of Hep-C
I can’t find the clip, but Winston was talking about ruining a date (I think, I can’t remember the exact context). He said, “We could break into a zoo, steal a bear, then we shoot that bear full of Hep-C, then release it in the restaurant when they order dessert.”
Very Brady. He’d do this to Brendan Lemieux to get back at him for giving him tetanus.
Also, his friend after Winston said this said “You don’t think just a bear alone in a restaurant is enough?” which to Brady, no it is not.
Winston puts a walkie talkie in a mailbox
That’s literally exactly how it sounds. Again, I can’t find the clip, but he put a walkie-talkie in a mailbox to speak into when his good friend Nick put a letter in to scare him. Overall pretty harmless. Not evil enough for Matthew, I’ll give this to Brady.
Series finale: Winston’s Greatest Prank - Evicting his friends
If you plan on watching New Girl, please don’t watch this video or read this part because this is the series finale. Anyways, Winston evicts his friends from their apartment. That’s it, that’s the prank — definitely Matthew, this is very cruel. I could see Matthew and Brady acting on this together, but definitely not Brady alone.
Those are all the pranks I could find. Matthew and Brady are both menaces to society and should never be allowed to do pranks.
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Scorchstack is back on top of the charts for this year’s Spotify Wrapped. As it should be. Next year we release our first full-length album.
Edmonton Oilers fans are to blame for The Wave
You absolutely know that they think this is an accomplishment
by Nathan (@hanoten)
Late Saturday night, your Calgary Flames were in a dead heat with the Winnipeg Jets. Tied at 2-2, the Flames clearly could have used a boost from the faithful fans gathered to find that extra gear.
Instead, fans did the wave. Flames lost.
It’s no secret how we at the ScorchStack feel about the wave. It’s one of the few things we were hoping COVID-19 would kill. Alas.
It sucks!
But as we were discussing on OT2 after Saturday’s game, not everyone knows who is to blame for the wave, and I’m here to fix that. It’s those blasted Edmonton Oilers fans, in a history that only the Oilers could make.
Now, of course, because people love taking credit for stupid ideas and trying to profit off of recreating them, many people and fanbases take credit for the wave. It gained international fame at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which has led to it being referred to as the Mexican Wave. The Wikipedia page has been edited several times with different groups taking claim for it, as right now the Colorado Rockies (hockey team, not the baseball team) are credited with it. I know it was edited because I had a pro-Oilers editor assign me this story in 2012 for a different publication, and for some reason, this page has been edited several times since then.
What is confirmed as fact though is that the first televised appearance of “The Wave” came in an MLB American League Championship Series game between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees on October 15, 1981.
I am sure that you, dear reader, have noticed that none of these are the Edmonton Oilers. Very astute of you. Here is where it gets interesting. Both the Colorado Rockies and the New York Yankees were being led by professional cheerleader, “Krazy” George Henderson. You know that a guy named George responsible for the wave wasn’t just crazy. He was Krazy. He had been hired by several NHL teams to ramp up the crowds, including the Edmonton Oilers when they were at Northlands Coliseum.
As the story goes, the wave was born because Oilers fans fucked up doing the cheer that Henderson was trying to get them to do. One of his shticks involved having one section of the arena jump and scream, and then another section on the other side of the arena would do a call and response. On a particularly dark night in 1980, there was a staggered response from Oilers fans because they weren’t sure who Henderson was trying to rile up. As it goes, some fans were delayed as they leapt to their feet, giving the impression of a wave as the two sections did it a few seconds apart. The next section of fans allegedly followed, and the first-ever wave circled around in Edmonton as a cursed maiden voyage. Krazy George would continue to hone this terrible, terrible product (likely where the Colorado Rockies come into play) before debuting it on purpose on TV in Oakland.
It is extremely Edmonton to not only create a horrific abomination because Oilers fans failed to meet the minimum expectation, but it’s also another thing for it to become more famous and more defined after it was taken out of Edmonton. Or maybe it’s just another part of their glorious history that they are purposefully trying to forget.
Now, this was 40 years ago, and a lot could have happened then. But the question is also worth asking: if Edmonton Oilers fans were able to follow simple instructions from a self-proclaimed Krazy hype guy from the ‘80s, would we have the wave today? And furthermore, would the Flames have lost on Saturday to the Jets?
I’m not saying no.
The best t-shirts from this bootleg company that tried to follow me on Instagram
I'll think of a better title later.
by Christian (@decayinwtheboys)
If you’re like me, you probably joined Instagram way back when it was just a simple app for posting silly pictures with your friends at a fast food joint with a sepia filter and the tag #hipster.
Now, Instagram kind of sucks, and I think that it’s because 90% of the website is ads. Every third post, between each of your friends’ stories, on the explore page, everywhere. They even replaced the notifications tab with a whole page dedicated to buying products. If you also haven’t noticed, your phone is spying on you, and any cursory Google search, mention of a product in a text message, or even saying something within range of your phone’s mic will be picked up and sold back to you on Instagram.
It definitely stinks that capitalism keeps aggressively inserting itself into what was previously personal spaces dedicated to connecting with other people; that they’re willing and able to get their hands on any of your personal data to make a quick buck. And it’s just pure rotten that the algorithmic marketing model creates the absolute shittiest products imaginable in a world of extreme inequality, where literally any of what I’m about to show you can actually become real once you click “buy” when there are humans within your own city limits who may have to skip a few meals to do the same.
But it’s also kind of funny sometimes. Case in point, this bizarre Flames fan page that tried following me on Instagram which sells some top-notch merchandise. Here is my top ten. Hope you enjoy.
10. Flames Not Just When We Win Est. 1972
We’ll kick off the list with this one, which could pass for official team merch. Yes, it’s extremely corny. Whatever, at least they used actual photos of the Flames. I’m tempted to buy any product with Mikael Backlund on it, so they’ve got me there.
9. Flames Pacman Oh Shit…
Lazy. Uninspired. No effort. Don’t know why they hollowed out Pacman to put the Flames logo in there (kind of just realized that the Flames logo looks like a Pacman right now, let me design these shirts).
8. I AM
There’s a number of shirts on this store that are just Superhero + Flames logo. This is the runaway favourite of that genre. There’s supposed to be something after “I AM,” whether it be “GROOT,” “CALGARY FLAMES,” or “CALGARY FLAMES GROOT.” Groot is also holding a field hockey stick, by the way.
7. Once upon a time There was a GIRL who really loved CATS AND THE FLAMES it was me The and <3
That says “the and” right? A cursive “e” doesn’t look like that. That’s an A. The And.
(I also want to end this post with this shirt just so I can say “the and” but there is much better stuff coming up, trust me).
6. ALWAYS BE YOURSELF UNLESS YOU CAN BE CALGARY FLAMES THEN ALWAYS BE CALGARY FLAMES
If you haven’t figured it out by now, all of these shirts are algorithmically generated: a computer took a number of templates (probably sourced from other, more successful web stores), inserted a trending search term into the blanks, spit out these images, and then marketed to people who identified as having an interest in that search term. The level of human involvement in these is near zero.
That’s the comedy of this article, in a nutshell: a computer spit out a stupid piece of nonsense like “Always be yourself unless you can be Calgary Flames then be Calgary Flames” and tried to sell it to you for $35. Sometimes it slaps a Marvel thing on it too, just in case it didn’t trigger the impulse part of your brain enough.
5. If You Don’t Like THE FLAMES Kiss My Endgone!
This is a sensory overload. Flirty Snoopy with a lipstick-marked human ass. Football Calgary Flames (the logo on a football helmet does work, though). Another cursive error, and there’s no grey area on this one. That is definitely a “g.” Kiss my endgone.
4. Flames Lives Matter
I had to combine these two because they’re so badass. The first one is awesome because the American flag does famously have red lines on it, but they changed white lines to red ones for some reason (check the different shades on the grey lines to figure out which are supposed to be red and which are supposed to be white). The second one shows us that the backbone of the American flag is another American flag, but Flames edition.
3. I CAN DO CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME ALL THINGS THROUGH and ALL NEED FLAMES AND A WHOLE LOT OF JESUS TODAY IS A LITTLE BIT OF
Personal story time: I played on a hockey team with two unrelated kids who would always show up to the dressing room wearing shirts that took a famous product’s branding and clumsily inserted Christianity into it, a precursor to the things you see here but before AI was doing it. It’s some real evangelical shit that doesn’t really make sense on the surface (Commandment two is do not take the Lord’s name in vain- I will honour him by wearing a t-shirt that compares him to chocolate), and you’d think it’s harmless, but it was a nightmare for specifically me, someone unfortunately named after their religion despite not having much interest in it. They talked to me excessively about Jesus before every game and I was unfortunately lumped in with them on the basis of having a name. This came to be a problem when one of them was the coach’s son and suspicions of nepotism came to ruin the dressing room of a rec league hockey team (I didn’t even play on their line!).
In my head, I imagine that they’ve grown up, maybe looked back at their relationship to their faith, realized that their pushiness wasn’t an authentic expression of themselves or their religion, and have since regretted it. I hope this has happened because I will buy these shirts for them and make them look like dorks all over again. Oh, how the turn tables.
2. Dabbing Santa Claus Wearing A Mask With Toilet Paper Holstered And Holding Hand Sanitizer Christmas 2021 Calgary Flames
It’s way too late to order this for Christmas 2021, but the great news is that the candy cane can also be interpreted as a seven so everything depicted here will remain topical six years down the road.
1. I’M A SIMEPLE MAN
I was so distracted by the boobs and the beer that I didn’t notice “simeple” at first. I’m the simeple man this shirt is for, and that’s why I bought it.
Thank you for reading my article. The And.
Up Next Week
Drew Doughty gracefully returns just in time for him to get bullied by Matthew this week
Juuso Välimäki is sent down to the Scorchstack’s AHL affiliate and scratched there too
We look into a nice farm upstate for Floob
There is something special cooking in the draft over at Scorchstack, and you are gonna want to tune in once it releases. What is it, you ask? All in due time my friends