Behind The Scenes: A Closer Look At The Offices Of Blueshirt Banter
Well with the rest of the NHL taking a weekend off, we here at Blueshirt Banter would like to invite you, our humble reader, on a walking tour of our offices here in this undisclosed location.
As you walk through the doors; you notice a faint smell, almost like the smell of lives rotting away. You ask your tour guide Cam Talbot about it but he nervously tugs at his shock collar and pushes you forward silently. Walking through the long hallway you see a small glass case with the words "Jim Schmiedeberg: In Memorium" etched above it and inside the case was a felt banner with his name and the number nine inside of it, a bunch of old articles and a skull with "Chris Drury was here" carved into the wood below it.
Mr. Talbot pauses by the shrine, presses his hand against the glass and you see a single tear roll down his cheek that he quickly wipes away.
You press on and finally get into the main offices of Blueshirt Banter; a long hallway with eight wooden doors, four on each side with gold nameplates and padlocks on the outside of each door.
Cam Talbot walks through the hallway and unlocks every door and opens them before stopping at the end of the hall in front of a set of double doors.
You enter the first door on your left, the nameplate says Brian Winters and as you peak in, you first notice the multitude of computer monitors on the small wooden desk. As you make your way further in you actually see a young man surrounded by the monitors furiously clacking away at a keyboard examining every screen and trying to keep up with what seems like a constant stream of news.
It doesn't help that every 15 seconds a virtual monkey pops up and throws a handful of digital poop at the screen that forms the words "Keep going Rook". You see the young man twitch a bit as you slowly back out of the room and as you close the door you hear the sound of a computer monitor being smashed with a hockey stick.
You move onto the door immediately across from Brian's office and read the name plate that is oddly gleaming "Brandon C. Come on in"
So you open the door and are greeted by a warm hello and a smile from a nice young man, although you do notice a small twitch at the corner of his eye.
You look around the office and notice an awful lot of Michael Del Zotto posters, jerseys and effigies hanging around the office. As you make your way further you see that Brandon keeps smiling and offering you a seat and tries to make you feel as comfortable as possible. You see that the top of his desk is literally the half the face of Michael Del Zotto and somehow Lou Gehrig with the words "my hero 4ever" written in sharpie.
You take a quick look at Brandon who twitches again and get the hell out of the office.
The second door on the right has a nameplate with something that looks like "8Kpower" on it but it is hard to tell due to the long gash going through it and "Kevin was here" carved into the wood of the door. You tentatively make your way into the room and you are hit with "I was right about Gaby wasn't I?!" and "TRAID GABORICKS" scrawled across the walls, floors, ceiling and almost every space available.
You move further to realize that Kevin wasn't really in his office, but there was a note carved into the desk "I'll be back later you AMERICAN SON OF A BITCH"
You find that odd and quickly left the office
You move onto the Third door on the left and see the nameplate read "Dig Deep" and you cautiously enter the room and immediately you regret it as you see the walls have been replaced with padding, as if from an asylum. Also you see a man sitting behind a desk muttering to himself and looking over his shoulder as if someone was always watching him. You catch a little of what he was muttering
"The memes are not pleased...we must please the memes"
"Cover them all in the Jazzalanche...cover them all"
He rocks back and forth in his seat and doesn't seem to notice as you walk out the door. You here a maddening cackle that runs down your spine.
The next door you walk into had the name "George E. Ays" on the nameplate and the room was filled with printouts of graphs and charts with blackboards filled with formulas lined the walls.
"Sit down. Your lesson in advanced metrics of hockey begins now." A voice says from behind the computer but you don't stick around for long and as you leave he throws a textbook at your head and reminds you
"Numbers don't lie they just don't agree with you"
You're closer to the end of the Hallway now, you see Mr. Talbot sitting a chair...asleep
The next door you go into says Nick Montemagno on the name plate, you walk but find a note on his computer screen "Be right back, covering the All Star weekend"
You have two more doors left until you reach the large double doors and you really want to leave but you have to see every office and you walk into the next one and notice the faded "Rob L." on the nameplate and look inside the office.
The first thing you notice is the feeling that the office is barely used, but there was however a large stack of printouts similar to George's office which showed signs of life that the office was used.
The last office you walked to was Jim Schmiedeberg's and you notice that this door was locked. You looked at Cam Talbot who just shook his head slowly.
"No one uses his office, out of respect"
You shrug your shoulders and make your way to your tour guide who opens the double doors into a large, lavish office that led to what looked like a throne and on it was a man who looked to be busy looking at a wall of monitors. Its only then that you realize that he's looking into the offices of the writers.
"Dammit, Dig's gone and gotten loose again" you hear the man murmur to himself and shake his head.
You clear your throat and he turns and notices you.
"Ah, Cam, you brought the newest members and given them the tour. Good, now put them with the others and watch our site hits go up even more." The man throws you an evil grin as you feel Talbot push you towards a back room to the right of the man's desk.
'Oh, by the way, the name's Joe, Joe Fortunato and welcome to Blueshirt Banter your one stop shop for New York Rangers news and analysis" the man says with a wicked smile and you hear a wicked laugh as the door closes behind you and you realize that you're not going anywhere anymore and that you never wanted to leave