Last night, former Washington Capitals great Dino Ciccarelli was inducted into the NHL Hall of Fame. Normally, when someone goes into the Hall in their sport, we wax about how amazing a player they were, how much of a locker-room presence they were and all the amazing moments that person provided us.
The other approach is to share some awkward stories about the person, in a Hall of Fame roast of sorts. That's the approach CSN hockey analyst Alan May. May is a former teammate of Ciccarelli, and apparently, they were roomates on the road. That explains why May decided to honor Ciccarelli's induction by telling a story of how he freaked Ciccarelli out with a rat.
The backstory: May was out in New York City, and while he was out, Ciccarelli fell asleep in the room noshing on some treats. When he woke up, he saw a rat in the room, and freaked out and ran down to a teammates' room. May returned, saw the rat, and went down the room with Ciccarelli. Commence story:
I get up and go check to see what's going on in the bathroom and it's a leaky faucet in the bathtub, I tighten the faucet knob and place a facecloth beneath it to keep it from annoying me all night, by annoying him. All the while, Dino is under his covers asking me over and over again "Albee what is it, Albee what is it?" Seriously? Really? Like really? As soon as I'm done I yell at the top of my lungs "RAT!!!!" And run out of the bathroom like I'm scared to death as if there were actually something in there and Dino jumps up on his bed and starts yelling(screaming) and jumping around like his bed is surrounded by rats...I can't take it anymore and I fall down on my bed because I cannot quit laughing, I laughed so long and so hard that my abs were killing me and now little Dino is just irate with me and he's swearing at me, yelling at me and calling every name in the book and I love it!
In the mornings I usually wake up before an alarm goes off or the wake-up call goes through and the next morning after a few blissful hours of sleep I wake up before the future Hall-of-Famer, jump on my bed and yell "RAT!" at the top of my lungs and Dino almost flies through the ceiling into the sixth floor. Awesome, I know I am going to have a great day when Dino quits swearing at me.
Ciccarelli went out and played a great game the next night, so May takes credit for waking him up. May's whole blog post is a must-read, as he also discusses when he got into a fight with Ciccarelli over control of the TV. Check it out here.