Skate Bites: Bryz Has Flu, Bernie Parent Creeper Stories Continue to Come Out of Wing Bowl, Rangers Sponsored by DKNY

Bryz's Thermos, which he might need to get over the flu

There are few things which delight Flyers beat writers more than the mysterious concept of goalie drama. 

This morning, when Sergei Bobrovsky and some 5’10ish dude with a white helmet took to the ice sans $51 million goaltender, the Twitters went aflutter. Who is this masked man? Where is Bryz? Is he hurt? Did Peter Laviolette murder him and jettison him off into the, you guessed it, universe? 

No, not exactly.

Bryz has the flu, according to Paul Holmgrem. And the 5’10 goalie is a 26-year-old from Drexel Hill named Justin “Moose” Musciano, who, apparently, skates regularly at the SkateZone. Pretty cool opportunity, but not rare. Another local goalie sometimes fills-in during practice, too.

…

As (@FakeWIPCaller) on Twitter points out, the best underlying subplot from Wing Bowl is – not surprisingly – the emergence of Bernie Parent as a certifiable creeper. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when I saw him hanging backstage with Kobayashi and Tony Luke Jr., but, one person I was talking to in Kobi’s locker room, in between Bernie's two visits, told me the following: Hey, you just missed Bernie. He walked in and said, “Alright, let’s see some pussy!”

Then there was the reader who saw him sign a tit.

Then we got a picture of the tit.

And now, Maureen O’Connor, of Gawker, relays this bit of tid. I’m not sure if it’s hyperbole or not, but I’d imagine it’s not far from the truth: [Gawker.com]

My Wingette disguise worked perhaps too well. One of the dignitaries in our group was Bernie Parent, the 66-year-old former NHL goalkeeper who won the Stanley Cup with the Flyers in 1974 and '75. A white-haired man with a tan face and squashed nose, Bernie walked up to me before our entrance, chuckled, and wordlessly began to rub me like a shiny trinket.

"You see this ring?" he said, waving a Flyer's ring before my face and applying friction to my torso. "I got it for winning the Stanley Cup." He rubbed me from my ears to my elbows. "What, not a hockey fan?"

He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of his boat.

Never change, Bernie. Never. Change.

…

Finally, somehow I missed this one in the midst of all the Winter Classic news: The New York Rangers are being sponsored by DKNY: [Sports Business Journal]

The NHL Rangers have signed a sponsorship deal with DKNY in which the clothing brand will appear on the team's practice jerseys for the remainder of the '11-12 season (Rangers). The branding will have "quite some visibility" as the Rangers are featured in HBO's "24/7" series leading up to the Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 2. DKNY in April '10 inked a long-term sponsorship deal with the Yankees, "which brought its city skyline logo to a billboard in Yankee Stadium" 

It all makes sense, too. Justin Bieber’s friend Henrik Lundqvist was spotted at New York Fashion Week.

H/T to NYRangersBlog.com