Happy
Friday, managers!
The people
have spoken. After an absolutely grueling week of voting and a battle at the
top that was tighter than my butthole when I’m watching an exciting biathlon
race, we have a winner for the world’s favourite Men’s & Women’s Choir
Fantasy Speed Skating Draft 23/24™ team name. 175 votes were cast from 35
different people, so we actually got a pretty gorgeous distribution of votes if
I do say so myself. Stepdad would be proud of how mostly normal-resembling the results
are. Now it’d be far too easy to just tell you who won right off the bat, so if
that’s all you’re here for, I invite you to scroll down now. But if you’re
someone who enjoys wasting your minutes at school, work, or god forbid your free
time, come along with me on a journey to the top.
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Let’s start
at the bottom. The most uninspired of the uninspired. The team names that got
passed over without exception by 35 people. I personally don’t think all of these
team names are bad, per se, but they may not have been punny, witty, or downright
filthy enough to garner votes from the other managers. Our bottom-dwellers are:
Glasgow
Fast Turn Left (0)
God’s
Hands (0)
The
Lolly-mom Gang (0)
I am a
Belieber (0)
The
Momagers (0)
Rookie
team (0)
OG Pearman (0)
David,
bosa’d my Huizinga (0)
Team
swinging Jake paulers (0)
i am
speed (0)
I’m actually
quite surprised that
Glasgow Fast Turn Left
didn’t get any votes since it’s
a delightful portmanteau of a fun speed skating mantra and the former place of
residence of two of our current team managers (yeah Coatbridge isn’t Glasgow,
but it’s close enough). You’d think at least one of those two would’ve voted
for it, but I guess not.
I am a Belieber, The Momagers, Rookie team, OG
Pearman,
and
i am speed
all named their teams based on characteristics of the managers rather than the teams themselves, and that clearly didn’t go over well
with the voters.
God’s Hands, The Lolly-mom Gang, Team swinging Jake
paulers, and David, bosa’d my Huizinga
… honestly, what???? Am I and 34
other voters missing something? Feel free to explain yourselves in the comments
(i.e. please explain yourselves in the comments).
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Moving on
to the teams that got 1-4 votes. They weren’t so bad to merit getting looked
over by 35 people, but they also didn’t do much to inspire mass appreciation
either. These teams are on the right track to attracting more than just their
own managers’ attention, but could also benefit from studying some of the team names
in the following groups if they want to leave a lasting impression. Our not-great-but-not-abysmal
team names are as follows:
I Have A
Dream (1)
Gone
Fishing For My Kok (2)
Woj
yourself
(2)
Graemer
Fishsticks 6: Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate fishsticks. (2)
Different
Creatures, Same Habits (2)
DB’s
Drunk Drivers (2)
Mr.
Andy's Handy-Dandy up the Ante Speed Skating Squad, brought to you by God (2)
Hoping
for a Miracle (2)
Joy to
the World (3)
Let’s Go
Girls (3)
Had to look up half my team and can't spell the other
half #winningcombo (3)
Pederfiles Won: the Bittner story of how Thomas Herzog
Stolz his child bride (4)
Heir Jordan (4)
Goetz, Glory, Han (4)
That's so Raven's Cravings 2: Bot Baxton Caught Waxin'
Raven's Unshaven Contraption (4)
In this category, long-time members of the Draft may notice many of our regular themed team names:
I Have A Dream
and
Hoping
for a Miracle
continue the Méline tradition of complementary song titles, but it appears that this
is the first year that the newer of the Mélines chose neither an ABBA song nor the French national anthem. Could this be grounds
for divorce? Stay tuned.
Graemer Fishsticks 6
is, of course, the sixth
iteration of this team name that somehow finds a way to become more and more bottom
text with every passing year.
Different Creatures, Same Habits
is a nod
to one of the draft organizer’s perennial “Creatures of Habit” moniker.
Mr. Andy’s
Squad
&
That’s so Raven’s Cravings
are both cursed products
of Dad’s prolific imagination that came about as a result of their team managers failing to submit team
names for themselves.
Gone Fishing For My Kok, Woj yourself
,
Joy to the World, Heir Jordan, and Goetz, Glory, Han
all did a good job
of scratching my itch for puns involving skater names. I’m not gonna lie – I got over the “Kok” puns after Femke's first year on the world cup circuit, so I’m hoping the managers next year distance themselves
from using it in their team names. Too on the nose, friends. It was funny the first time, but do better next year. To the others
in this list, keep up the good work. Shoutout also to
Let’s Go Girls
– concise,
clever, and a nod to Shania Twain? Well done.
I really appreciate the spicy team names from the
managers of
DB’s Drunk Drivers
and
Pederfiles Won: the Bittner story
of how Thomas Herzog Stolz his child
. Their willingness to capitalize on
drama from the speed skating world (even if the drama is eight years old) is brazen
and, in my books, effective. It’s a shame that
Pederfiles
reads about as
easily as Hyunsun Hwang finishing her B group 1500s at the first 2 world cups.
Finally,
Had to look up half my team and can't spell the
other half #winningcombo
is not a team name; it is a forgettable Instagram caption.
To the team manager who submitted that name and to the THREE (!?) people who
voted for it, I’m gonna need you all to go stand in the corner and think about your
life choices. This name should have been right down there in the zero-vote club. Do
better.
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In our next category, we have what Dad would call “The Chase”.
These team names garnered anywhere from 5 to 9 votes each. The managers of
these teams can be proud of the names they submitted (or didn’t submit). They have
the right formula for a winning team name, but they simply got overshadowed by some true
behemoths in the category ahead of them. In this group, we have:
Paul Blart: Mall Llop (5)
Kim I Seok Kok? (5)
COWS Pei ft. Connor Cowe, Bart Moolwef, and Dairyman
Zurek (5)
Rob’s Discount Blowjob: Longer, Limper, and more Tinter
(6)
Jenning de B-group (7)
12pm public skaters (8)
From Kazakhstan with Love (9)
Even Steven’s Semen Eating Emins 2: Eager Emin Receives
Even Steven’s Peen Excretion (9)
Thanks to two more nameless shitters, Dad had to pull out another
pair of toxic and alliterative/rhyming demon names from his imagination in the
form of
Even Steven’s Semen Eating Emins 2
and
Rob’s Discount Blowjob
.
And you sick people voted for them. A lot! Stop enabling this behaviour; I beg
of you.
Paul Blart: Mall Llop, Kim I Seok Kok?, COWS Pei,
and
Jenning de B-group
are all excellent examples of the plays on words that I
come to look forward to every year in the team names. Well done, gang. I know I just said that I was done with Kok puns, but
Kim I Seok Kok
also employs such a hilarious
Kim pun that I can’t help but love it. Special shoutout to COWS Pei for incorporating
not one, not two, but three bovine puns while also shouting out to the manager’s
home province. They may have taken some liberties with spelling and capitalization
(Pei without capital letters is the name of a current Chinese world cup 500
skater) and the team name does everything except roll off the tongue, but I
enthusiastically applaud the multi-dimensional effort.
12pm public skaters
is a much, much, MUCH better
reference to the Calgary Olympic Oval than the winning team from the 21/22
season (
World The In Ice Fastest)
. Seriously, I wish I could entirely delete
the 21/22 year from history just so I don’t have to keep seeing that god awful
team name.
From Kazakhstan with Love
is a clever reversal of
your expectations based on the composition of their team. You may have expected
the phrase to say “From Russia with Love” because of the popular and critically
acclaimed James Bond movie & book of the same name. But aha! You were
tricked! The love has been sent from Aydova and Golubeva in Kazakhstan, where
both of them were born and raised for their whole lives and haven’t been
involved in scandalous national transfer drama with Russia and the ISU.
Regardless, Aydova is the only Kazakh left on the team after an early season free agent swap
left Golubeva lost in the sea of other undrafted shitters. So maybe this team would be
more aptly called
From Kazakhstan with Lukewarm Appreciation Conditional
Upon the ISU Actually Letting You Race.
Just food for thought.
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Finally, let’s get to the part you’ve all been waiting for. According
to democracy, these are some top-tier team names. The best of the best. The
cream of the crop. The Zhang Hong’s lap of team names. These teams hauled in
10+ votes each, and it’s (mostly) clear why. Without further ado, here they
are:
Bloemen until you get to the top (10)
: This team
manager must have been taking their own advice because they made it to the top.
Perhaps a few men were left un-bloen because there were still a few teams with
more votes, but I personally think this is a top-tier team name that absolutely
deserved every one of its votes. A pun that’s crass and original? Yes please.
Jutta Leerdam and the Half-Blood Prins (10)
: The
crossover we didn’t know we needed. Such a well-executed pun, and Jutta Leerdam
even has the right syllable flow to match Harry Potter. The team name rolls off
the tongue like butter. This manager absolutely spanked her habitual creature
fiancé in this vote and is looking
well-poised to keep the spanking going all the way through the season now that she
was able to pick up a ruthlessly abandoned Kazakh (people have been quick to
drop the Kazakhs this season…) and her unnamed-due-to-being-put-into-witness-protection-thanks-to-Dad-mercilessly-cyberbulling-him
partner making the most braindead free agent swap I’ve seen in 6 seasons of the
draft. Mei Han deserved better.
Czech
out my Sverre-y long and Rio hard (Enge)Bråt-wurst (10)
: Now that I’ve recovered from the seizure
I get every time I read this team name, let’s discuss. This team’s manager
outsourced the naming to another manager, who did a pretty good (but messy) job.
Visually, this team name is an absolute nightmare. Like wowza that last word
(?) shortens my life span by 3 weeks every time I read it. BUT. Despite the fever
dream of a visual aesthetic, this team name incorporates FOUR of the team
members, which is an impressive feat. The use of “Sverre-y” and “Rio” are
clever puns which I’ve never seen before. Bravo. However, I’ve been to Prague
before and saw “Czech out my…” puns on merch at nearly literally
every
corner of the city, so points off for that. I’ll let it go this time though
because I’ve never seen it used in the draft before. I don’t have the strength
to address the last pun again, so I’ll leave it at that.
Grand
Theft Sato V (11)
:
This team name surged to a large early lead, garnering 8 votes before any other
team hit 6. I really thought it was going to keep up its momentum and take it
all, but its progress slowed quickly after the first evening of the vote and it
eventually fell back into a two-way tie for third place. Such a concise and
clever pun absolutely deserves to be at or near the top, so I’m glad it got all
the votes that it did.
Valerie,
please call me back (your RBC mentee) (11)
: This name nearly made me choke when I first
read it. In the span of 8 words, this team name tells an entire story. So
heart-wrenching. So hilarious. So vulnerable. So hot right now. I don’t know what
else I can say about this name except that I hope the manager is able to find peace
from their trauma.
--------------------
The final
two team names were deadlocked in a tie at 12 votes, so I had to call in a
former draft participant to cast their 5 votes to hopefully break the tie. That
individual voted for both of these leaders, taking the vote to 13 apiece. I
solicited input from another former draft participant, who
also
voted
for both of these teams, taking them to 14 apiece. Finally, I sought votes from
the basement-dwelling roommate of none other than Dad, and the tie was broken.
Coming in at second, we have:
Is that
a Beune in your team or are you just happy to see me? (14)
: Honestly, I didn’t expect this
team name to be as popular as it was, particularly because the joke was
contingent on the reader knowing the Dutch pronunciation of Beune (it’s funny
because Beune sounds kind of like boner in Dutch). Regardless, it’s pretty cool
that the people liked this team name as much as they did. I bet the manager who
came up with it is really grateful for the validation. I also bet the manager
is really cute and handsome.
Got
Herzoggin’ on my Ting til I Werf (15)
: Our winner! Wooooo! I'm not gonna lie: I’m actually pretty torn on this team
name. Obviously it has some clever, filthy puns that the people like. My issue
with this name is that the core pun was already employed by then-rookie manager
Daniel during the 22/23 Draft with his team
I got Herzoggin on this Kok
.
So I’ll give credit where credit is due: this winning manager came up with a
nasty, punny name that incorporates three of its team members, and he didn’t even have to use “Kok”
to do it. I appreciate because the manager had to work to get to the
innuendo, and they did it well. However, I think Daniel gets half the credit
for this team name. At least cite your sources.
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If you’ve read
this whole post up to this point, I feel obligated to tell you to go do
something more productive with your time. But before you do that, feel free to
sound off in the comments about the results and/or my interpretation of your
team name. You may also wish to publicly roast bad free agent swaps, which I
also whole-heartedly encourage.
For the
sake of transparency, I voted for
Grand Theft Sato V, Jutta Leerdam and the
Half-Blood Prins, Bloemen until you get to the top, Jenning de B-group,
and
DB’s Drunk Drivers
.
And finally, here’s a visual graph of the
results for the Excel-oriented among us:
All the best,
Your Biological Father