And I Miss the Old Barn, too

During their road trip, the St. Louis Blues visited "the Professor" Ron Caron this week. Somehow, in the midst of the reminiscing and story-telling, the former Blues GM managed to trade Brad Boyes to the Vancouver Canucks for an aging, second line defenseman. More surprisingly, he also signed winger Brendan Shanahan to a multi-year offer sheet.

Current Blues GM president John Davidson seemed blindsided by the series of events. "I don't know what happened," Davidson gasped in exasperation. "One minute Caron was pointing to a signed photograph of Garth Butcher, and while I was distracted, we lost our best scorer."

In an announcement the next day, National Hockey League officials immediately pronounced Caron's action to be in violation of league policies "like tampering, or something," and awarded the Blues' first round pick in the 2009-2019 drafts to the New Jersey Devils. When the New York Rangers objected that, in fact, Brendan Shanahan played for them, the Rangers were awarded a game-worn Vitali Prokhorov jersey as compensation. Rangers GM Glen Sather pronounced the compensation to be, " all in all, pretty sweet."