Give me the biggest hockey man you have. No, even bigger than that. Make him huge. Make him tall, thick, and dense—a real slab. Give him a powerful slapshot, and a willingness to use it. Make it the fastest, hardest, heaviest shot in the sport. Make him eager to use it. Let him go weapons-free and really wallop the bejesus out of that puck as hard and as often as he can. Let's see how much that puck can take. Let it be punished for its crimes. He is large, like a beef, and it is small and hard, and all the laws of physics conspire to impart his magnified aggression upon it. Woe be unto those in its path!
Let him clobber the puck again. And again and again. Torque and leverage and ill will are his compatriots, while its allies have deserted it. No goalie comes to its rescue to cover it. No whistle provides a temporary truce so that it may live to be abused another day. See: Again, he is rearing back. Again, he is preparing the lash. Beatings will continue until morale improves or possession is turned over. Neither come. The puck is funneled back to him. What did it do in its past life to deserve this? Why are they letting children watch this carnage? He is a disc of rubber and pain, now. In the world, there is only him and the huge man's stick. The huge man winds up again.
Tage Thompson unloading five straight one-timers in the span of about 30 seconds Thursday night is perhaps the most delightful thing that's happened all season. It does not matter that he did not score in the sequence. It does not matter that the Sabres lost the game by a score of I don't care to Did you see him slap the shit out of that thing. The vibes in Buffalo, where the first-place Sabres are poised to break a 14-year playoff drought, are immaculate. Listen to that crowd when Thompson lifts his stick for the third time. Fans who yell "Shoooot" must be in heaven. And god bless Rasmus Dahlin and Josh Norris for force-feeding him like they were making foie gras. When the big man calls, you must answer.
On a night when Auston Matthews's season likely ended on a dirty hit, and the Leafs are being castigated for not retaliating; when William Eklund scored perhaps the prettiest and certainly the most airborne goal of the year, and the Sharks dressed an EBUG who played his final college game the night before; when Connor McDavid gave and received punches; when several Defector colleagues traveled more than 90 minutes to witness a meaningless late-season matchup between the worst and third-worst offenses in the league—Tage Thompson is the clear highlight. Sometimes hockey is about grace, and toe drags and stretch passes and exquisite delicacy. Sometimes it's about the biggest guy on the ice letting the chopper sing.
