Canadians are a sad and desperate people. The National Hockey League is in the middle of a lockout, and it doesn't look like the NHL will return this season. The Stanley Cup will have to bear an ugly mark for the rest of its existence, 2012-13 Season Not Played.
Understandably, Toronto Maple Leafs fans are hungry for hockey. They'll take anything they can get. Even if it's covered in trace amounts of 60-year-old feces.
Memorabilia company Frozen Pond recently auctioned off a bunch of artifacts taken from the old Maple Leaf Gardens, home of the Leafs from 1931 to 1999. (Wonder for yourself why the plural of Toronto Maple Leaf is Leafs, not Leaves.) Among treasures like a 1967 Stanley Cup banner and the Gardens' old penalty box was a toilet taken from the home dressing room. It is believed that Stanley Cup champions have shat in this toilet, so Leafs fan Jim Vigmond bought it for $5,300 dollars. Here's what Vigmond told Toronto's The Grid:
[My wife] Sharon suggested that it be buried in the backyard. But I’ve got a better place for it. I’ve got sort of a combination cigar-smoking/sport- memorabilia room.... She didn’t give me a [price] limit on the toilet; she just said I was effing crazy.. But I thought it was underpriced by a long-shot; I thought it would have gone into six figures.
Gary Bettman, please bring real hockey back, for the sake of Canada.