I’m holed up in frosty Minnesota with the inlaws after a last-minute escape from New York. Besides breathless accounts of Brett Favre bitching at Vikings coach Brad Childress during the Vikings loss on Sunday night, the number one sporting observation up here is the fire that scorched the Minnesota Wild’s equipment in Ottawa last Friday.

Story is that a fire mysteriously broke out in the Wild’s equipment van when it was parked in the Scotiabank Place lot the afternoon prior to a Senators-Wild game, and a truckload of Wild gear got cooked. The incinerated goalie mask up top is probably the pièce de résistance, but all the burnt stuff looks cool. Photos courtesy of Barrie Roney.

Goddamn but it must have smelled awful. My experience burning sports gear is limited, but instructive. When the Bills traded Willis McGahee to the Ravens, me and some other drunks celebrated by burning McGahee jerseys on our roof in Brooklyn. For one thing, the damn jersey didn’t just catch by itself, as one would hope. It’s not like a dollar bill or a cotton flag, where you can just stick a lighter under it and up it goes. No, you kinda gotta work for it, and lighter fluid’s pretty necessary. After a bunch of false starts, we ended up dousing the jersey on the grill, then holding it up with a stick as it burned. Afterwards, I felt like some kind of dumb American version of a jihadi – except instead of burning Israeli & American flags, I was burning #21, and instead of holding Kalashnikovs, I was holding a can of beer. Plus I couldn’t get the smell out of my nose for hours.

Anyways, although there was talk of cancelling the game, the Wild played the Senators on Friday as scheduled. Surprise: Ottawa won easy.

Inspired by the charred pads, Paul Lukas (the inimitable Uni Watch) linked to a thorough list of uniform fuck-ups he put together a few years back.

Before I get back to drinking and not looking at a computer, anybody see last night’s Giants-Skins game? Me neither – like I’m gonna watch the Redskins – but I did see this pathetic fake field goal Washington tried to pull:

Genius.

- Caps