Longtime listeners of Jim Rome know of the sports radio host's references to (and encouragement of) octopus being tossed onto the ice at Detroit Red Wings games. While you ponder how one sneaks a cephalopod mollusc into a modern sports arena, know that San Jose fans have come up with their own dead creature to mark the presence of Anaheim's NHL team.
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It happened in the final period Monday in what the Orange County Register calls a first for OC's franchise, and if any team deserved a dead-duck salute it's this year's collection of Daffy underachievers. That said, er, read, it must be noted that San Jose's attempt at bad mojo failed to keep our Ducks from beating their Sharks, 3-2.
“I guess it was somebody who wasn't into ducks,” Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller reportedly said of the fowl flinger afterward. “At the same time,
something's got to be a little wrong with you if you take a duck to a
game and sit on it for two hours to be able to throw it in the third
period.”
Reacted USA Today's Tom Weir, “Let's just hope that Ducks fans don't retaliate with a shark toss when San Jose plays at Anaheim on Jan. 4.”
No, that would be sooooo wrong, Honda Center season ticket holder next to the opposing bench or anywhere else close enough to center ice to get a shark over the clear enclosure.
However, if you want to hunt down Celine Dion and toss her former Canuck carcass out there for tonight's game against Vancouver, knock yourself out.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.