Beloved Flyers mascot Gritty posted a list of items he’s packing to take to the NHL All-Star Game in San Jose later this month, and after poring over his items I’m now 100 percent convinced that someone is getting murdered by him.
Gritty is absolutely planning to commit murder at the NHL All-Star Game
Read between the lines, folks.
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
We have a couple of different basic groupings here that establish the flow of his trip to California.
1. The sunshine group.
This includes everything someone would need for a trip to the beach:
Skim board, swimmers (which he adorably call “swimmies”), tanning oil, aloe, rash guard, and shark repellent.
These all make sense. The shark repellent is probably a little excessive, but with the game in San Jose I get it. No red flags here.
2. The travel group.
These are items designed to make his travel and stay more enjoyable:
Underwear (which he singles out as “the good pair”), world atlas, Air Pods, Breathe Right Nasal Strips, change purse, salt, pepper, and a good attitude.
Again, no issues — everything makes sense.
3. The big game group.
Items Gritty will need to put on a show at the NHL All-Star Game itself.
Jersey, face mask, beard essentials, ice skates.
Fine.
Which leaves us with the final group.
The devil is in the details, and from Gritty’s reminders he is absolutely planning to kill someone in San Jose. It starts with the one inexplicable item that has no place in the three groups “rope”, and there are a lot of salient reasons someone might need rope. Maybe it’s part of an NHL goof? Perhaps he wants to rock climb? But then you get a little deeper and something sinister emerges ...
“take care of that thing with that guy”
OK, so we have rope and a confrontation with a man. Maybe not enough to indict Gritty, yet. We also have two other suggestions that might explain all this out.
“get $$$ from ATM (no paper trail)”
“call hotel request adjoining room with Claude [Giroux]”
Piece this all together: Gritty doesn’t want anyone to know his whereabouts, he’s bringing a rope, he needs to “take care of something”, and wants a room right next to the only friend in town he’ll have for a much-needed alibi.
Gritty is going to kill.
The end.
