Syracuse Crunch Goalie Karl Goehring Named AHL Player Of The Week!

No, I'm just kidding, Mats was named NHL player of the week yesterday and I guess all you have to do to get that honor is score 8 points in four games leading your dead/dying team to a 3-0-1 record for the week and 6-1-1 in the past two. It's weeks like this where you just know that scores of boys are emerging from wombs all over Canada, and the first words they hear in their tender ears are from the handsome doctor saying to his mother, "Say hello to your son: Mats!" Kind of like how there are 350,000 5'8" 20 year olds with greasy hair driving Nissan pick-up trucks with "Alberta ROX!" bumper stickers who only answer when you call them "Wayner".

Another thing that's for sure is that right now in Sweden, every goddamned Torkel, Torsten and Ulf growing up in that god foresaken country is fantasizing about wearing a blue maple leaf on his chest. Exactly like they did in the seventies and eighties when Borje Salming was playing. Salming, who could give a hit as well as he could take a skate blade to the face, first established Maple Leaf pre-eminence in Sweden when the Leafs took a flyer on him in 1973. This was at a time when, to the average NHL'er, the proper phonetic way of saying the word "Swedish" was "Chicken Shit".
The Swedes knew this and it left a big impression on them. Look at footage of ABBA from 1979 during their one and only North American tour. The last date was in Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens, and Benne or Binny or whoever the one with the beard was had on a Salming jersey. That wasn't just crowd ass kissing either as they had started the tour at the Northlands Colosseum in Edmonton, and I guarantee you the guy wasn't wearing a Cincinnati Stingers jersey, or whatever the fuck the Oilers were called back then.

The King of Kings himself was part of that worship. He grew up idolizing Salming and watching Leafs games with his father Tommy and his brothers. Mats carries on this legendary legacy in the land that brunette forgot. And don't let anyone tell you that people get all wet for Peter "My Feet Hurt" Forsberg. They don't. Compared to Mats, it's not even close. And I'll laugh in your fat face if you're stupid enough to bring up Daniel Alfredsson, whose major redeeming quality is that he looks like an ugly lesbian. Forsberg is major and everything, I don't want to take anything away from him, but don't ever forget who the Captain of Team Sweden was in 2006. Don't forget who dropped the pass at the blue line to Lidstrom for the gold medal winning goal. It was Sundin, and nothing but.

People are always yapping about how Mats is always the best player on the Leafs; that it's always up to him. Well guess what, sexy? No matter what team Mats plays on, it'd be up to him. He's so great, he could step in and win the Superbowl the same day he wins the pole for the Grand Prix of Monaco. And the only reason he doesn't, IS BECAUSE HE JUST DOESN'T WANT TO.