It’s been too long since we’ve come out to see you all. So let’s do that. This Thursday for the Hawks-Jets game, we will be trying out a new venue for our famous roadwatch, The Piggery on Irving (never Irving Park) and Ashland. They’re real excited to have us, we’re really excited to go there, everyone’s happy!

If you’ve been there before or after their little trouble with flames, you’ll know the food is outstanding. They’ll have $15 buckets of 312 and $5 burgers on Thursday, so it can be affordable to stuff yourself and get loaded with us. I’ll be the one in the Patrick Sharp Vermont jersey. Killion will be the one I’m hitting with a fish.

Also, The Piggery has a signed Patrick Sharp jersey they’ll be raffling off, so you might even win something other than whatever disease you probably will catch by being around us and our readers.

Join us, won’t you?

Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars

But with the Carpenter
On the seat
Way up in the capitol town

The USA
Be on the way
Prosperity bound

The only way
We could ever beat
These crooked politician men

Is to cast the moneychangers
Out of the temple
Put the Carpenter in

Let’s have Christ our President
Let us have him for our king
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
That they call the Nazarene

In baseball, sometimes basketball, it’s considered a show of confidence from your GM when he goes out and makes a trade early in the season after a healthy start. It’s not desperate thanks to the winning record, and it’s not scrambling at the deadline to get anything at all. It’s a show of faith that he thinks it’s not a mirage and you have genuine title aspirations, that even though there’s all the time in the world to adjust the roster, he’s making this move now because it’s there to be made.

I’m not sure it’s always felt like that in hockey, and Stan doesn’t need to prove to anybody that he has confidence in this team. And the whole heapin’ helpin’ of nostalgia on the Kris Versteeg trade last night makes it hard to keep in context. Steeger had a place in all our hearts as a member of the team that washed away a lifetime of misery. When players as well liked as Steeger are traded away you always hope that they may come back but you know in your heart they never will. So on the rare occasion when they do, you can’t help but be overwhelmed with surprise and glee.

But let’s try and remove the emotion out of it and see what the Hawks got and gave up.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.

At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.