Down Goes Brown's Grab Bag: Chris Chelios' Malibu Mob, and the 'Habs Habs Baby' Parody Song

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's Friday grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter.)

The third star: All the Pokémon Stuff—Pokémon is hot right now. Well, I just found out about it, meaning Pokémon was probably hot two months ago. Still, lots of NHL players seem to be talking about it. Teams are making jokes. Players are threatening each other. Wives are complaining. Johnny Gaudreau is getting mocked for it:

Get a life — Kevin Hayes (@KevinPHayes12)July 15, 2016

What does this all mean?

(That's not a philosophical question. I actually don't know what any of this means.)

The second star: P.K. Subban arrives in Nashville—By singing Johnny Cash, of course.

Howdy and welcome to #Smashville, @PKSubban1! >> https://t.co/oM7l4dnTDKhttps://t.co/dIcCeVJ1nT
— Nashville Predators (@PredsNHL) July 17, 2016

You just can't win with stuff like that, am I right, Montreal?

The first star: Phil Kessel's grandmother—Phil Kessel won a championship while leading his team in scoring with a bad hand, then snuck the Stanley Cup back into Toronto so he could share it with sick children. That's pretty cool.

His grandmother is even cooler:

That whole family is fantastic and I want them to adopt me.

This week's debate: Your team has made a major trade! But wait—did it make a smart move?

In favor: There's a few factors we should consider here. Obviously, we're going to start with the underlying numbers, which will give us a good sense of how the various players can be expected to perform. But we'll also factor in the roles they'll be expected to play on their new teams, since that can have an impact on…

Opposed: Whoa, whoa, whoa…

In favor: What?

Opposed: Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves?

In favor: We are?

Opposed: None of these players have even played a game for their new teams yet. Why the rush to judge the trade now?

In favor: Uh… because we're sports fans. This is how we react to a trade. Is this your first day here?

Opposed: OK, fine, but how can you know? You always want to declare winners and losers the day the deal is done. But you're just guessing, because you don't know what's going to happen. None of us have a crystal ball.

In favor: No, of course not. But we do have lots of information available to us to help evaluate trades at the time that they're made. Nobody's suggesting that means we'll be right every time, but that doesn't mean we can't even try.

Opposed: It just seems like a waste of time. We don't know what the future holds. Lots of trades have seemed lopsided at the time, but worked out in unexpected ways down the road. Why not wait and see?

In favor: OK. But how long are we supposed to wait? Can we talk about these trades in a few months? A few years? Do we have to wait until the players involved have retired before we can go back and judge a trade?

Opposed: I don't know. Maybe at least wait until they've had a chance to lace up their skates and take a shift or two.

In favor: A shift or two isn't going to tell us anything new compared to a career's worth of information. Neither will a few weeks, or even months.

Opposed: I just think we should all wait and see. We'll find out who won the trade eventually. Why worry about it now?

In favor: Because we're hockey fans. You're basically arguing that nobody should even try to evaluate any moves that their favorite team makes. Which is ridiculous, not to mention a total disconnect from what being a fan is all about.

Opposed (covering ears): La la la, I'm not listening.

In favor: And, by the way, can we point out that this whole argument is virtually always coming from the fans of a team that everyone thinks just got robbed? Nobody ever runs around saying "wait and see" when their team makes a good trade, or even a mediocre one. But when a deal looks indefensibly bad, that team's diehard —and let's face it, a good chunk of their local media—all suddenly decide that we need to go cone-of-silence on it. It's a cop out.

Opposed (trying to cover up Oilers logo on t-shirt): I have no idea what you're talking about.

In favor: And yes, sometimes we'll be wrong. Some guys get hurt. Some guys follow weird development paths. Even if we somehow knew that there was a 90 percent chance a trade was going to be disaster, that still leaves a 10 percent chance that it will work out. Everybody understands this.

Opposed: So why not say that?

In favor: Because there's no need. This is how people talk. Not every comment about the future has to have a detailed disclaimer about the inherent uncertainty of the knowable universe appended to the end of it.

Opposed: Huh. I guess that makes sense.

In favor: Good. So do you promise to stop making this terrible argument every time your team screws up?

Opposed: Who amongst us can truly know what the future might hold?

In favor: I hate you.

Opposed: I always knew you'd say that.

The final verdict: Whoa, slow down. We won't really know who won this debate for a decade or so.

This week's obscure player is Grant Martin, for no other reason than, as a reader recently pointed out, he had kind of a neat career.

Martin was a tenth-round pick of the Canucks in the 1980 draft, and was a decent scorer in junior, managing 41 goals for the Kitchener Rangers in 1980-81. But that scoring touch never followed him to the NHL. He made his debut with the Canucks in 1983-84 but was held to just two assists in 12 games. He played 12 more games the following season, but managed just an assist. That was it for him in Vancouver, but he landed with Washington as a free agent during the 1985 offseason, where he played 20 more games over the next two seasons, recording nothing but another lone assist.

If you're keeping track, that's a total of 44 NHL games without a single goal to show for it. Needless to say, Martin wasn't viewed as a major piece of the Caps' core, and he wasn't part of their playoff roster heading into their 1987 series with the Islanders. But then came Game 7, and some serious hockey weirdness.

The Caps had planned to dress former overtime hero (and Obscure Player alumni) Alan Haworth. But when Haworth wasn't healthy enough to play, Martin got the call to step into his first-ever NHL playoff game. Well, sort of. The Capitals forgot to update their lineup, and moments before the game they still had Haworth listed in Martin's spot. A press box worker noticed the error, and informed the official scorer just in time to have it fixed.

That turned out to be a good thing for the Capitals, because with a minute left in the second period of a 1-1 game, Martin finally scored his first career NHL goal to give the Caps the lead heading into intermission.

Let's just pause for a moment to think about what that goal could have meant. If it holds up, the Caps win the game and the series, and maybe their tortured history of playoff chokes never materializes. Instead, the Islanders tied it with five minutes left, setting the stage for what's become known as the Easter Epic, a marathon classic that caused Doc Emrick and Bill Clement to lose their minds and ended with the Islanders' Pat LaFontaine scoring the winning goal in quadruple overtime.

As for Martin, after 44 regular season games without a goal, he'd come through in his first playoff game with what was very nearly among the most important goals in franchise history. But that goal, and that game, would be his last. He never played in the NHL again.

The internet can be a funny thing. Last week, I wrote about the NHL's 1991 promo campaign that saw each team name a celebrity captain. That led to the question of which celebrities would earn the honors if the same choices were made today. That led to Red Wings fans confusing me by unanimously lobbying for someone named Dr. Cox. That led to me being outed and then roundly mocked as someone who has never watched Scrubs.

And all of that led to me being reminded that the actor who played Dr. Cox, John C. McGinley, is a member of the infamous Chris Chelios crew known as the Malibu Mob, which led to this week's trivial annoyance of realizing that some fans had never heard of this. And that leads to me correcting that right now.

The Malibu Mob is a tightly knit group of celebrity friends from Hollywood and pro sports. Their roster includes names like Tony Danza, John McEnroe, Ed O'Neill, John Cusack, and Kid Rock. Some estimates put their number at 20 or more. And Chris Chelios is their leader.

I swear to you I didn't make anything in that last paragraph up.

The Malibu Mob is a real thing, as confirmed in this Sportsnet article that features McGinley's explanation of the club's rules and regulations. (It also features McGinley's admission that he grew up as a Rangers diehard, so come on Red Wings fans pushing this guy for celebrity captain, get it together please.) Much of the crew showed up Toronto in 2013, when Chelios was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Can you join? No, you can't. You're not cool enough. I don't know you, but I feel pretty confident in saying that you're not going to be able to cut it with Kid Rock and Al Bundy. But if you wanted to take a shot, you had your chance a few years ago, when Chelios put his Malibu beach house up for rent. For just $100,000 a summer or so, you could be rubbing elbows with Laird Hamilton and D.B. Sweeney. That's how you start down the road to a life in the mob.

In related news, it's late July and there's nothing to write about in the NHL.

Last week in this section, we featured "Moog"—a stirring musical tribute to Boston Bruins goalie Andy Moog. The clip came from the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast of the 1991 Adam Final between Boston and Montreal.

But if I know anything about modern journalism, it's that you've got to hear both sides. And as it turns out, the Canadiens had their own musical number from that same series. So this week, we'll turn the floor over to our friends in Montreal, as we present "Habs Habs Baby".

No, really. Habs Habs Baby. Why yes, it absolutely is a parody of the song you think it is.

• As with last week, we open with Chris Cuthbert, who wants to make it very clear that this song is not actually the work of the CBC, as he throws "a local Montreal radio station" under the bus. But they've put pictures to music, and off we go.

• You already know this is going to be some high-quality work when they sync up video of a kicked-in goal with the "Let's kick it" audio. Attention to detail is everything in the parody rap video game.

• We then get a weird montage of various Habs saying hi. And not even the good ones. Instead, it's a murderers' row of mediocrity. I'm sure nothing strikes fear into the hearts of the Bruins more than being reminded that they're about to face Ryan Walter, Petr Svoboda and Brent Gilchrist. Fun fact: Ryan Walter had no goals and one assist that year. In the regular season and playoffs. Combined.

• Seriously, that whole section was basically the musical equivalent to when the NHL tries to get celebrities to present at their award shows and ends up settling for the guys from Entourage.

• Although come to think of it, now I'm picturing the look on Patrick Roy's face when somebody had to ask him if he wanted to participate in an inspirational Vanilla Ice parody. Hockey scholars have long wondered about the exact moment that Roy snapped and went from mildly eccentric goalie to full-fledged psycho. I think we may have found it.

• Why does this guy rapping about how much he hates the Bruins have a Boston accent?

• "Someone grabbed a hold of me tightly. It's Raymond Bourque saying please don't fight me." Shots fired, Boston.

• "But we continue to whale away, and win another Cup, yo! [awkward silence where more words should be]" That moment where you realize that keeping up with Vanilla Ice's rhymes is tougher than it looks.

• By the way, the Bruins' "Moog" was a parody of a Madonna song, and the Canadiens fired back with Vanilla Ice. In real life, those two were dating at the time. This means something. I have no idea what.

• Next up are various shots of cheering Habs fans. You, uh, sure were a handsome bunch back then, Montreal.

• "Happening at the Forum nightly. Really want the Cup, want to hold it tightly." OK, that's not bad. I may have judged you too quickly, Habs fan rap lyrics writer guy. You might just be alright.

• "Roy with the stop-oh." What? That's not a word. I take it all back, this is terrible.

• "Savard and Corson blowing out the candle." Um… what? Does that mean something? Or did they just feel some weird compulsion to choose something that rhymed with the original "rock the mic like a vandal" line? This is bothering me.

• By the way, I had to look up the lyrics to "Ice Ice Baby" for that last point. I certainly didn't already know them. It's not like I still have them memorized 25 years later. The song is definitely not on my iPhone right now or anything. No more questions! This press conference is over!

• "Deadly, when they're playing in melody." Words no longer mean things.

• I'll give the CBC credit, they worked in some classic Angry Pat Burns clips. Which, as I'm sure you're aware, are the only known kind of Pat Burns clips.

• We get to a point near the end where everyone just kind of gives up. The song is just repeating "Habs Habs Baby" and the video editor has run out of clips and just goes with an extended slow-motion sequence of Montreal leaving the ice.

• I can't believe they didn't end their Bruins dis track with "Word to your Markwart."

• The song cuts out and we hear the familiar voice of Bob Cole, who opens with "And the one line that caught my…" before the clip cuts out. Wait, what? Did you just cut off Bob Cole when he was about to give us his reaction to Vanilla Ice? How dare you! Somebody needs to dig back into the archives and find out what line Cole was talking about. This is going to haunt me now. I swear, if we missed out on vintage Bob Cole saying the words "magnetized by the mic while I kick my juice" because somebody was too quick on the pause button, there's going to be hell to pay.

• We end with Cuthbert talking about Andy Moog, which is the exact moment where last week's clip started, because time is a flat circle.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.