Manalysis: Mike Milbury is the NHL's Matt Millen

Remember kids, not everyone who wears glasses is automatically smart.*

Rarest are the times when the planets align; when everything comes together in an angelic jambalaya of perfection. Hockey and football certainly have things in common: both are violent, look great in HD and employ large quantities of meat heads. That being said, it's unusual to see a pairing more joined at the blundering hips than "Mad" Mike Milbury and "Fire" Matt Millen.

Allow me to elaborate ...

Backgrounds marinated in likability

Giving Mike Milbury a tip of the hat for his playing days is the only sane thing to do. For christ sakes, the guy went into the stands ... AND BEAT SOME JACKASS FAN WITH HIS OWN SHOE. Remember in grade school, when you forced your "friends" to play the "stop hitting yourself game"? This was the NC-17 version of that.



Seriously, does it get any manlier than taking off someone else's shoe and beating the shit out of them with it? How does that guy look himself in the mirror? Imagine what it must be like for his buddies: do they tease him about it or is it such an emasculating experience that they just stay away?

That might be worse than trying to look your friend in the eye after sleeping with a 300 pound woman.

(Um, or so my cousin says.)

Millen, also a defensive player, did almost as well: he won four Super Bowls during a journeyman career. Almost as good as beating someone with their own shoe.

Tormenting fan base by making horrendous trades, idiotic signings and baffling draft moves (and sticking around as GM for an awkwardly long amount of time)

Mike Milbury spent an astonishing 11 years making the New York Islanders so atrocious that most young hockey fans forget that the team once won four straight Stanley Cups. Eleven years. It's amazing what kind of damage an idiot person can do in that much time:

• First trade essentially sent away Wade Redden for Bryan Berard and Martin Straka. Remember, this was "someday I'll make $6.5 million" Redden not "a crazed Rangers fan might kill me someday" Redden. And they received post-eye injury Berard and non-Jagr enhanced Straka.
• This is also the first guy to trade Roberto Luongo.
• Traded away Darius Kasparitis for Bryan "meh" Smolinski. Kasper becomes a part of Penguins lore after concussing Eric Lindros.
• Traded away pre-prime pre-neck breaking Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan McCabe for Trevor Linden. Oddly, Bertuzzi and McCabe are among the most openly mocked players in the NHL right now, but for a few years they were considered "stars."
• Drafts Rick Dipietro instead of Dany Heatley (although that did keep Heater away from dangerous New York traffic. Too soon ... still?)
• Trades Zdeno Chara for Alexei Yashin. Proceeds to sign Yashin to perhaps the most openly ridiculed contract in the NHL history (with the possible exception of Toronto signing that Finger guy who's so irrelevant I forgot his first name). Chara develops into a $6 million D who was so hardcore he wanted to be awake during his shoulder surgery (!).
• Oh, and guess what: the pick he traded to Ottawa turned into Jason Spezza. So essentially he traded away Chara and Spezza (core members of the Senators near-dominant teams) for franchise-killing pouty bitch overpaid center Yashin. Gadzooks.

That's just astonishing. Millen certainly isn't a slouch in the clusterfuck department, either. He drafted three WRs in the first round: one is basically out of the league, Roy Williams is a semi-bust and Calvin Johnson may never recover from slumming it up on a Millen-engineered 0-16 Lions team. Let's not even dwell on Joey Harrington (that's just cruel).

Is that the same photographer who had Brian Burke pose in the middle of an empty row? If not, someone might have a case for photo op infringement.

Shit, the guys almost share the same freaking name

Just switch it up: Matt Milbury and Mike Millen. If you read them real fast you might not even know there was a typo. This is getting creepy.

And of course, they pick up a TV job almost without missing a beat

The big debate regarding Millen is "how can you be credible when you clusterfucked a franchise into a 0-16 season" while everyone in Canada's too busy booing American Junior players to care that some atrocious GM is on the intermission reports (kidding, they're too busy eating flapjacks). Here they are - two of the worst decision makers their given sports have ever seen - already lapping up a nice TV contract.

And, you know what? Who cares. When you look at the parade of morons networks trot out for their shows (Terry Bradshaw ... Keith Jones ... DEION SANDERS?), maybe Millen and Milbury are the smartest in the room.

Sometimes it just comes down to Einstein's theory of relativity - which after some skimming, contains no mention of shoe-based brutality.


*Question: did Milbury dramatically remove his glasses while making a draft pick or announcing a franchise crippling trade? Because if so, then forget that I ever criticized him.