Bro No Mo’: On Betrayal and Blues-Beating

The Philadelphia Flyers won a hockey game tonight that they weren’t supposed to win, beating the Blues 2-0 in St. Louis. Despite playing a sextet of men on the blue line who are probably just as suited to freighting pianos as they are to playing NHL-level hockey, the Flyers shut out one of the best teams in the game.

It was glorious and mystifying and here are some bullets.

• Older BSH readers may recall when I introduced you to Brayden Schenn all those years ago. He was a beacon of light and purity. “America’s Little Brother” (it was somewhat less clunky than the better nickname “Luke, I Am Your Brother"). But then Brayden got traded to a city far away in a whole different timezone and his soul was apparently reset along with his watch. Tonight he leveled a dodgy second-period hit on affable seahorse Sean Couturier which initially looked terrible and devastating and treacherous and do you even know a person when they change jerseys?
• Then Couturier was apparently fine and all was better but still, we were all so shook, you guys.
• The most meaningful goal of the game was scored by Brandon Manning, a defenseman who usually occupies a small part of the box score (but resides permanently in the darkest depths of Connor McDavid’s mind). There were a bunch of reviews because some thought Jake Voracek might have become too intimate with Blues goaltender Jake Allen, but it stood.
• And that 1-0 lead stood through the rest of the game until Claude Giroux iced it like an office birthday cake with an empty netter. It was a tasty ending to a real sweet performance.
• Who are these children whom the Flyers won this game with though? Are they actually in the team’s payroll system or were they independent contractors found this afternoon on some Missouri-region TaskRabbit? But for real, congratulations to “Will O’Neill” for playing his first NHL game tonight at 29, an age at which you are no longer supposed to be able to achieve dreams. His appearance tonight was as plausible as the “designated survivor” becoming president after the State of the Union blows up, but hey, it happened.
• Alt, however, has so many uses. While O’Neill was on the left, Mark Alt(-Right) found all sorts of uses. Which is a great time to share with you all the wonderful uses for the Alt in your own life: the one on your keyboard! If you’ve ever sat near a keyboard wizard, you will have blown away. Here are four Alt-using Windows shortcuts to improve your productive life:
  
  Alt + F4 [Close active item, or exit active app]

Alt + ESC [Cycle through items in order they were opened]

Alt + Tab [Switch between open apps]

Alt + Win + (NUMBER 1-9) [A bit tricky but bear with me here...Open the desktop and open the Jump List for the app pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. Like if you have Chrome, iTunes, and Evernote in your tray, then Evernote is 3. Thanks, Mark!]

• Neuvirth got a shutout and is thus the player of the game but I wanna go back to Brandon Manning because I became aware tonight that he earnestly refers to himself as MANDOG. This is spectacular behavior for a 27-year-old adult. It’s a spectacular nickname: half CatDog, from the terrible Nickelodeon cartoon; half Manboy, like this 2010 Eric Saade song I’m guessing too few of you have seen.

The Flyers, again a .500 team, host the Avalanche on Saturday. Go Flyers.