Game No. 53: Steve Staios appreciation night

Wait that can’t be right.

So I’m goofing off at work today, as I am wont to do, and I check Twitter. I see a tweet from Vicki Hall, and assume it will be more information on the Bouma call-up, which I’d heard about earlier.

"Steve Staios draws in," it said.

My hope, my infinite and boundless wish, was that I had long misunderstood the term "draws in." I of course knew that it meant a defenseman being slotted into a forward position, but I was choosing to believe I had been wrong all these years.

Because there was no way in the fiery pits of Hell itself that Steve Staios getting shifts at forward could be considered a good idea at any level above Timbits. And I’m talking Steve Staios now. Mite B defenses would probably eat him alive.

On some level, it makes sense. I guess. If you do have to dress seven defensemen — and Calgary does what with Lance Bouma unable to make it to the game tonight — you probably want the six that are actually quasi-competent NHL-level players to do the actual defenseman-ing, so maybe you give Staios between three to five shifts up front in remarkably low-leverage situations, and only when Jarome Iginla and Rene Bourque are tired of being double-shifted. Plus, when he inevitably turns the puck over twice a shift, there will probably be someone behind him to potentially clean up the mess (this, however, is not a given, as we well know).

But on the other hand, no. This is not a thing that should be allowed to take place. I don’t care that the Thrashers have won something like two of their last 13, or that Dustin Byfuglien has regressed toward the mean with a thud heavier than his one-timer or that their offense has been deader than Calgary’s farm system. The words "Steve Staios" and "forward" should never ever ever ever ever be in the same sentence without the words "over Brent Sutter’s dead body" right next to them.

So whaddaya think tonight? At least a minus-2, yeah?

It certainly has been a season.