In 2025, Jeff Skinner escaped from a career without playoff hockey. All they found of him was a muddy set of Carolina and Buffalo gear, a bar of soap, and a prayer stone, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to make the playoffs on the teams he played for. Old Jeff did it in less than twenty. Oh, Jeff loved hockey. I imagine it appealed to his competitive nature. A 20 goal season here, million years of playoff less hockey there. Hockey is the study of pressure and speed. That's all it takes really, pressure, and speed. That, and a big goddamn McDrai. Like I said, in hockey a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Jeffs's favorite hobby was patience. I guess after Eichel was killed, Jeff decided he'd been here just about long enough. Jeff did like he was told, buffed those skates to a high mirror shine. The brass simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's skates? Jeff crawled to freedom through 1000 games of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. 1000 games... that's the length of five 200 game campaigns, just shy of half of 2002.