The Barnstormer has secured the cooperation of a locked-out NHL player who has agreed to document each day he is kept out of action on the condition that we do not reveal his identity. Ever. Read all the daily diary entries of “Cheap Throat” here.

10:30AM — So bored. Thinking about asking some of the other guys to start a book club. My sister is in, like, three, and she says it’s fun. It’d be cool, you know, the guys could come over, and it would be a sort of a potluck thing, we’d have dinner and a few drinks, Tom Collins or whatever. Then sit down in the living room and talk about books.

The question is what book to start with. Probably we should start with something hockey-related, you know, to ease the guys in. Maybe King Leary, or one of Bidini’s books. Most of the guys aren’t big readers, so I figure something like that might make them more comfortable before we tackle real meaty stuff. The problem is that I’ve never come across a book that adequately captures the feeling of being on the ice, of facing an opponent and so hating him that you’d happily move the blade of your skate across his esophagus and render his children’s lives a fatherless void.

Goddamn I miss hockey.

11:47AM — Just beat the living snot out of a couple of pillows. There’s feathers everywhere. Now the other pillows know not to be dicks.

12:14PM — I can’t seem to get into my Hotmail account.

1:00PM — Just checked my bank account online. I only have $4 million in chequing, and $150K in savings. Not sure if that’ll get me through the month if this lockout goes on. Make a note to ask agent about jobs in Europe. Maybe I could force Glen Metropolit out of his paycheque. He slashed my left wrist once in Washington, and it still stings on rainy days.

2:23PM — Just tried tofurkey. Weird.

2:28PM — Just threw up tofurkey.

4:15PM — Masturbation sucks when you have to do it yourself.

7:36PM — If I was a bird, I’d probably be a llama. Or a bear! Oh, wait. Those aren’t birds. I’d be a howler monkey. Wait, man. This game is hard.

I wonder if Donald Fehr likes action movies.

9:39PM — Yunel Escobar is a dick. Who writes homophobic slurs on their face? Man. And how he write it on there so well. Did he have help? Anyone know where Alvarez was at the time? What a Bellows.

Further Reading:

• “Cheap Throat: The Diary of a Locked-Out NHLer“. Read all the other entries here.
• “Complicit in the NHL’s Demise: How the NHL & its players hate hockey, and how the fan is at fault” by Mike Spry
• The Barnstormer’s Take Hockey Back fan protest event