Kyle Wellwood Finishes Dinner, NHL Career

There's a popular- I don't know what it is- saying, phrase, feeling, that we as Leafs fans have when we banish someone from the paradisaical planes of Leafs Kingdom. It's based in part upon wise experience, and part in self-hating fantasy. It goes something, but only something, like this: "He'll for sure come back to haunt us." Sound familiar? Of course it does.

This is something of a birthright for Leafs fans. We've earned the ability to utter something so entirely self-defeating. The Leafs are a team well known for squandering assets based on any number of criteria: From the necessary (Bryan McCabe trade), to the desperate (Tuukka Rask for Andrew Raycroft), to the heinously stupid (The entire Ballard regime). It's partly the fear that your team has made a terrible mistake, and partly a basic insecurity in all of us, like when you don't want your ex to find anyone better than you. Although that's never happened to me. Am I right, ladies? Ladies? Ladies!?

I believe western Canadian scientists have found the antidote to this common Leaf-based affliction, and its name is Kyle Wellwood.

As reported on CBC, TSN and a Jenny Craig location near you, the former apple pie of my eye has done the unthinkable, and by unthinkable, I mean everything I predicted for Kyle since last year: he's shown up to another NHL training camp fat, out-of-shape, and as one Canucks executive said while dry-heaving into a garbage pail, "Oh my God... our second line center!"

Kyle, seen here doing his off-season training, saved his father from throwing him under the bus this year, instead replacing him with Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault. Vigneault went public with his concerns about Wellwood's lack of fitness and commitment to being a pro hockey player, in an attempt to light a fire under Kyle. Let me tell you something, Kyle Wellwood sitting on top of a solid rocket booster, is not enough fire under this guy to get him motivated.

When asked for a comment after news of Vigneault's unhappiness leaked, Kyle simply stated that he knows he'll have to improve his conditioning, adding, "Is 48% body fat really too much?"

However, there are those in the Canucks organization not unhappy with Wellwood in the blue and green. The ladies who provide the team with all their meals and snacks think he's a real delight:

"What a darling..." said one. "...he said he loves the way I do me celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins on top! He told me he keeps some in his glove during practices."
"Same thing Elvis did!" said her friend.