Just three days after Blues players brawled during practice, the hockey team’s official Twitter account sent out this video of a puppy on the ice, during practice doing hockey puppy things like playing with a puck, chasing a stick, and just being all-around magical.
Coincidence? Probably not.
Now, I’m no hockey expert—I went to my first game last night and published my first hockey-adjacent blog just over an hour ago—but I’d say that this pupper, like most dogs, has some decent stick handling skills.
This puppy isn’t exactly a stranger to the franchise. Back in October, the team announced that the front office, working with the nonprofit Duo, was going to train and care for this puppy to help prepare him for life as a service dog.
Here he is looking slightly terrified as he’s being hoisted up in the air, Simba-style, by a furry.
Right now the service that Barclay—named for Blues legend Barclay Plager—is performing is keeping players from beating the shit out of each other. Just think of him like one of those therapy dogs that universities bring into the library during finals to help calm frazzled students. Except that instead of unwashed students facing mountains of debt upon graduation, they’re armored adult men wielding sticks.