A Mysterious Website

(We're still accepting writer applications, folks).

I don't want to brag, but I spend a lot of time on the Internet. I visit all kinds of crazy websites both for fun and for research. And as the lockout seems more and more likely to eat into the regular season, my Internet spelunking has reached new heights (or depths I guess works better for that metaphor). I've been getting a perverse level of enjoyment peering into the depths of the strangest and worst hockey websites around, from the Yahoo comments on Puck Daddy articles to pretty much every single hockey forum ever. I mostly observe, though I will occasionally post a comment or question. Nothing much ever comes of my attempts to interact with the maniacs and fools who frequent these sites...until now.

In response to one of my wise-ass comments on a random hockey Internet oubliette, someone sent me a link to a very strange website. I can't go in to much detail, and in fact can't even tell you its name, since one of the requirements of my membership to THE SITE was a promise of secrecy about certain things. Just talking about THE SITE at all MIGHT be violating the rules I agreed to (they aren't very clear), but the whole thing is too bizarre and exciting not to share.

The website seems to be an NHL almanac/database of some kind. It has news stories, statistics, player info, and game reports stretching waaaaay back in to the past (the first season listed seems to change almost every time I check. Usually it's 1917-1918 but it's also been 1920-21, 1937-38, and, one time, 1876-77!). I looked at a few box-scores that I could get to load (about 50% of the links on the site don't work at any given time, but WHICH 50% are broken appears to change constantly. Weird.) and quickly realized that the games they are referencing NEVER HAPPENED. It's like some bizarre, massive fan-fiction alternate universe NHL! For example, the Kings still won the Stanley Cup last season, according to THE SITE, but they won it in a game seven overtime against the Penguins, led by a seemingly-never-concussed Sidney Crosby!

This is incredible. I can't believe it exists. I've sent e-mails both to the person who initially sent me the link and to the guy named "Tegmark" who runs it (and who seems to be the only contributor, though there are odd comments on many of the game reports) but I haven't heard anything back yet. In fact, both e-mails got returned to me as "undeliverable." What is going on here?

Clearly this place is going to be my new obsession. I'll report back as often as I can about what I find. But before I go I need to share one final bit of information - the most exciting and insane part of this whole thing:

According to THE SITE, the players and owners reached an agreement on the CBA a week ago. The lockout, at least for this madman's version of the National Hockey League, is over.

The real regular season is supposed to start on October 11th. Without CBA progress we will probably get an announcement very soon that games have been cancelled. If that happens, instead of doing normal gameday posts for Sharks games, I'm just going to copy and paste the reports from this website. It'll be weird, and it might get my membership revoked, but it's better than nothing, right?