FanPost

If The Penguins Settled Catan

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Credit: ginnerobot on Flickr

The bond between athletes and popular board game Settlers of Catan is not a new one. But until now, we didn't know that it had spread into hockey.

This Tuesday, the Penguins posted the annual holiday gift baskets that each player creates and then is auctioned off for charity. While most Penguins fans don't have a cool $500 to drop at minimum, it's always amusing to browse them and see what each player considers "important". (Nick Bonino's basket, for example, is all for dogs. Good man, Nick Bonino.) And Eric Fehr apparently considers Settlers of Catan essential to the "spend a day like Eric Fehr" starter pack.

Which begs the question - what would it be like if the rest of the Penguins players all picked up Settlers of Catan the way the Green Bay Packers did? After much thorough research and investigative journalism, I was able to determine that this is how games between the team would go:

  • Sidney Crosby would be the most thorough player. He would read all the rules before starting, follow each of them to the letter, and make sure everyone playing with him was doing the same. He would wind up knowing the bylaws of the game better even than Fehr. And he would always insist that the hexagonal resource tiles be arranged in the suggested arrangement in the rules.

  • Marc-Andre Fleury wouldn't ever actually play, preferring instead to just tell everyone else how they should be playing. He'd spend the entire game shouting advice like, "oh, you don't want to make that trade", and "don't put the road there, you're making a huge mistake". Whenever he'd get asked if he wanted to join the next game instead of yelling at everyone, he'd go "nah, this is more fun," and then start throwing unused road and settlement game pieces at each other and laughing when they got lost in people's hair or shirts.

  • Evgeni Malkin would understand how to play well, but he wouldn't actually do it. Instead, he'd hoard all the sheep because they're "the cutest card".

    "You know that sheep are actually the least valuable ," Fehr would try to explain.

    "My sheep all have names," Geno would tell him stubbornly.

  • Sergei Plotnikov wouldn't understand enough English to totally get how the game worked the first few times he played it. He'd improve quickly, but never actually come close to winning, probably because he always lets Geno convince him to hand over all his sheep resource cards.

  • Ian Cole would name every settlement and road, even though it isn't part of the game. They would all be named after places in either Game of Thrones or Harry Potter.

  • Chris Kunitz would be the Monopoly Card asshole. For most of the game, he'd be nice, trading when asked and not causing any trouble. Then he would go, in his kindest fatherly voice, "does anyone have any ore?" When people said yes, he'd slam down the Monopoly card and take it all.

  • Kris Letang would be deeply suspicious of everyone. He'd refuse every trade he didn’t propose first, and even then he'd back out if the person he was trading with seemed too eager to agree. "Je fais pas confiance à ces enfoirés," he’d mutter, and Fleury would nod in solemn agreement.

  • Patric Hornqvist would be the dick who blocked someone's budding longest road with a settlement "Sorry," he'd shrug, smiling sunnily like it was an accident. It wouldn't be an accident and he wouldn't actually be sorry.

    "How am I supposed to build my road to Winterfell now?" Ian Cole would ask.

  • Ben Lovejoy would spend all his resources on development cards, even though they'd never get him any closer to winning. He'd be similarly invested in building on ports, in spite of never having enough resources to make a port useful. "They wouldn't build these things into the game if they weren't strategically advantageous," he'd insist.

  • Olli Maatta would be sneakily good and ruthless. He'd win almost every game he played and bashfully shrug, as if it was a surprise to him too. The secret to his success would be his artful deployment of the robber, which he would wield with deadly precision.

    "No," Geno would groan when Olli would move the robber to a meadow he had a city on. "Not my sheep."

  • There would never be enough sets of pieces for Adam Clendening to play, even once Fehr brought along his expansion pack. He'd be okay with it, he'd just be happy to be there.

  • Eric Fehr would refuse to play Settlers of Catan with hockey players ever again.

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