Kings Gameday: NTC

The Tampa Bay Lightning are in town and they are a boring franchise. They have a generic team name, in a city no one cares about for anything, and have one player on their roster who is worth mentioning who is also bland despite having superstar status. They are neither a team that annoys me nor that I enjoy knowing about. If they ceased to exist, I wouldn't be heartbroken, however they wouldn't be my first pick for a team I'd like to see removed. I regularly forget they ever won a Stanley Cup.They do have one aspect I completely loath about them however.

Their jerseys.

They are complete copies of the Toronto Maple Leafs' (and their third jerseys completely copy the Kings'). The Leafs on the other hand are an interesting team. Largely because they are a towering inferno raging out of control in a dumpster. Every time they get close to being slightly dangerous, they find a new way to implode fantastically. On top of this Toronto gets a lot of media coverage and has ridiculous storylines crop up all over the place. Some are loads of crap, but one that has turned out to be very real is that players absolutely hate having to play there. Quite possibly because they know ridiculous stories will be imagined and penned about them. This past off-season had Josh Gorges refuse to be dealt to the Maple Leafs. Brian Boyle and Dave Bolland also turned down Toronto for Tampa Bay and Florida respectively. Roberto Luongo had no desire to be sent there either, and wound up in Florida. So when the Leafs traded away Cody Franson and got Olli Jokinen as a throw in, well...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Let&#39;s just say Olli Jokinen was less than thrilled to hear he had been traded to the Leafs.</p>&mdash; Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrenDreger/status/566994275507109888">February 15, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Maybe it's because the team is awful. Or it's that the fan base is rabidly craving any sort of semblance of respect. Or that the media covering the Leafs is out of control blowing every little thing that occurs with the franchise out of proportion. Or maybe it's the culture of crack smoking politicians. Or hell, maybe it's simply just the degenerates associated. Me? I think it's a combination of all the aforementioned issues. Which can be summarized in one word.

Mirtle.

James Mirtle has ran countless players out of Toronto, driven a mayor to absolute shame, seized control of the burgeoning crack industry, and is giving Phil Kessel nightmares. Why else do you think poor Phil looks so disheveled? The David Clarkson contract? Mirtle's idea. He has been steadily chipping away at the foundation of Maple Leafs franchise and the entire city of Toronto, possibly even the whole country of Canada.

Yet his most grievous mistake in life was giving Battle of California existence. Yes, giving birth to a deplorable, disgruntled, selfish, disgusting, illiterate, bully of a blog. Since then, wars have been waged, injustices perpetrated, and trolls enabled. You may think those sort of things were prone to happen on their own, but you are big, ignorant dummy. It's because of BoC. You may not know it, but every single thing that has gone wrong in your life and everyone you know's life is because of the battleofcali.com. Didn't get that promotion? Sorry (not sorry). Got divorced? Whoops, our bad. Caused the outbreak of mumps and measles? Yep, us again.

And who do you really have to blame for all of this?

Mirtle.

So twenty-five million years from now when the sun is exploding, obliterating our tiny little rock you've long since died on (likely alone), wiping out all traces of us entirely, you can know that one thing lived on. That it was Mirtle and BoC's fault.

The Kings have won four games! I don't understand it either. It's probably because I started planning for an April where I am out running around doing fun things and not trying to think of ideas for BoC. Sigh.

Prediction: James Mirtle kills me.