With the season now over after a return to the playoffs and the Western Conference Finals, we’re looking back at each player who wore the Indian Head sweater for the 08-09 Season and grading their performance. Your hero and mine, the one, the only – James Wisniewski
James Wisniewski
#34 / Defenseman / Anaheim Ducks
6-0
207
Feb 21, 1984
Contract Status: Wiz is worth your team’s entire cap hit (trust me) but he’s generous enough to sign for something a little less.
The Good: Wiz didn’t get into his first game with the Hawks this year until December 16th when he had 3 assists in a victory over the Oilers. The “official” reason was he was rehabbing a knee injury but I’ve heard from very legit sources that the true reason was that Wiz was a special mission to rescue a litter of baby pandas that Gary Bettman was keeping in a hidden location. He was planning to drink their blood.. not for special powers or anything, he’s just a dick. It took him a while to find where he was hiding them but once there he found that Bettman had left only Jordan Tootoo to guard them – bad idea.
Sadly, on the trade deadline day, Wiz was dealt to Anaheim. Is it any surprise the Hawks lost 7 of the next 8 games after “the trade”? The clubhouse leader was gone and it takes a while for a team to get over that. Once with the Ducks though, Wiz bravely led a team with no real talent past the president trophy winning sharks and helped take the Wings to 7. Sadly though the Wings discovered Wiz’s one and only weakness – a shot to the ribs that causes a lung contusion followed by an elbow to the jaw from your team’s resident Swedish fatass. Wiz missed only one game but wasn’t able to fully recover and the Ducks lost because of it (and only because of this)
So there’s simply too much good to cover here – so lets just say “all of it” was good.
The Bad: The only thing that’s bad about the wonderful Wiz is that somehow that absolute moron Tallon thought he should trade him. Clearly, this will go down as the absolute worst trade of all time. Worse than Cam Neely and a pick for Barry Pederson (who?)… Worse than Brock for Broglio.. Worse than VERSTEEG! for Bochenski.. Worse than Ruth for cash.. The bar for worst trade of all time has now been set, I mean, who has ever heard of this Pahlsson character…
Playoff Beard Strength: Do I even need to tell you it was amazing? No.. I don’t
Nicknames: Much like Yahweh it’s taboo to actually use Wiz’s real name (so I’m going to hell for using it in the title) so there are many names to use for the man. Adonni, Shepherd and my favorite from Battle of California – Wizard of Niewski.
Related Photoshops: It’s probably a sin to alter any images of the man so I don’t think any photoshopped pictures exist and if they do the creators probably died within hours of creating them.
The Grade: This might be our hardest decision yet… so you tell me.
James Wisniewski’s final grade for the ’08-09 Season
| A+++ | 31 |
| A++ | 16 |
| A+ | 19 |
| A | 56 |
| Much much higher.. | 103 |