It's the month of spook, and hockey is no exception. In fact, I would argue hockey is one of the spookiest sports around, and I have evidence.
First, and probably the most obvious, is the goalie mask.
The white mask with holes cut out for the eyes is, at this point, synonymous with serial killers. Thanks Jason Vorhees. Add a chainsaw and you have either a low-budget horror flick or this scene from a Chevy Chase movie. Spooky.
To be fair, goalie masks have advanced quite a bit since players were tying a single bit of plastic to their faces, and the masks invoke significantly fewer murder vibes now than before.
What has stuck around, however, are the knives players strap to their feet in order to move around on the ice. If you don't think skates are lethal, think again. Tom Hanks used a skate as a makeshift hatchet in Castaway. Since nobody was actually murdered by ice skate in that movie, take the Iron Lotus from Blades of Glory.
As Coach put it in the movie, the Iron Lotus is "like any revolutionary idea, it scared the s--t out of the establishment," which, to be fair, was because it cut people's heads off if not performed perfectly.
If the movies don't do it for you, try the real life example of throwing dead animals onto the ice during matches. It happens, folks.
The Detroit Red Wings' fans are known for throwing dead octopuses onto the ice during games. It became such a problem that one fish market in Pittsburgh started requiring IDs during the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals.
Florida Panthers fans are even worse, as they throw (plastic) rats onto the ice after goals, calling two in a row a "rat trick." The tradition came after one player killed a rat in the locker room with his hockey stick, and later scored two goals off the same stick. It wasn't quite a hat trick, but rat rhymes with hat, and I guess that's good enough.
These spooky examples are not to say that hockey is bad. I would argue the exact opposite. Even if your team loses, if there was a good fight or some guy spins an octopus over their head during the game, it's awfully hard to have a bad time.
Just one piece of advice from our editor-in-chief at The Post: If you want to dress as your favorite hockey player for Halloween, don't paint black lines below your eyes. Even I know better than that, and I just picked my team two weeks ago.
#GoLeafs
