Hockey Fans Cannot Stop Themselves From Throwing Thousands of Plastic Rats on the Ice

It’s an incontrovertible rule of nature that if you give a hockey fan something, they will throw it, as far and violently as possible: beer bottles, pretzel chunks, their own teeth, engagement rings, Lindbergh baby, doesn’t matter. Anyway, somebody gave an arena full of hockey fans some rats.

The Florida Panthers played the New Jersey Devils Thursday night, the same night that some absolute genius in the Panthers organization decided to hand out to fans. Some frantic Googling tells me this was in order to commemorate a tradition of “throwing rats on the ice after goals during their run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1996.” K!

In any case, Panthers forward Jonathan Huberdeau scored a goal, and then this happened:

“I tell you what, this is really not good at all, folks.” one of the announcers observed. I beg to differ!

Haha, look, they had to come out special and sweep up all these damn rats:

The Panthers got threatened with a penalty, but ultimately didn’t get one. Hang on to your rats.

Update/Correction: Haha, wait, yes, they did get penalized. Carry on, rat-chuckers!