The Ultimate Video Game Diss

I love this story. Imagine you’ve been working all your life to make it to the next level. Your hockey career blossoms, and you’re one of the very, very few that not only get drafted by an NHL team, but you actually play some games, perhaps a whole season. You are at the pinnacle of your sport, playing amongst, with and against the best players in the world.

Then – suddenly – it’s all put in perspective. You’re not that good, really. In fact yoiu’re one of the worst players in the league. Says who? Some nerd in a cubicle, that’s who. We introduce NHL 2K9, the video game. Players are given an overall rating (Sidney Crosby got a 99 out of 100), and the few hwo get a 60 (the lowest possible rating) are deemed the worst players in the league.

They are:

• Riley Cote, Philadelphia Flyers F

• Dany Sabourin, Pittsburgh Penguins G

• Michael Leighton, Carolina Hurricanes G

• Pekka Rinne, Nashville Predators G

• Curtis McElhinney, Calgary Flames G

• Rob Davison, Vancouver Canucks D

• Tobias Stephan, Dallas Stars G

I’d love to see a round-table discussion where the programmers could explain to these players exactly how it was that they came to the conclusion they were the effectively the worst in the league. In my head it breaks down to a little something like this:”It’s really quite interesting - You see, what we did was calculate the total number of minutes you were on the ice and cross-referenced that by the time you actually had possession of the pu–”

“I’m going to need to interrupt for a moment while I cross-reference my elbow with your temple… Why don’t you go ahead and take a quick puff from that inhaler.”

(Actually, reading up on 2K Sports who developes the game it says that the game is officially licensed by the NHL Players’ Association. So as a whole all the players pretty much agreed that these guys were the shittiest of the bunch. Uhm, in a word: “ouch”.)

Hat Tip to Puck Daddy for the story!