Today's signing of -- and confusion regarding the disambiguation of -- Johan Fransson, reminded me of my old abandoned sequel to Bob Miller's (original) nightmare. The sequel was spawned by the Lehtonen/Vishnevkiy trade, but I never had the energy to finish it. Now, I don't care. Franzen/Fransson has pushed me over the edge. Here it is, from the SBN unpublished archives, slightly updated to include the Franzenssons.

In tonight's episode, Bob makes the mistake of watching NHL on the Fly before bed. He sees Lehtonen has been traded to the Stars for Vishnevkiy. Bob laughs, "what is this, the Onion? Vishnevski was exiled to Siberia (thank god) and that's not how you spell it anyway, and Lehtonen is already on the Stars. Idiots!  Wait. What? Ivan Vishnevkiy? Kari Lehtonen?"

That night, Bob dreams that Kings GM Matthew Lombardi visits the press box and tell him that he just swung a four-team deal that got him Lehtonen and Lehtinen for Vishnevskiy and Vishnevski and then swapped Visnovsky for Vishnevskiy and somehow ended up with all five players. 

P.A. announcer David Courtney intones: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Los Angeles Kings..."

Daniel Sedin / Mats Sundin / Henrik Sedin

Eric Staal / Jarret Stoll / Jared Boll

David Krejci / Mike Ricci / Mark Recchi

Milan Michalek*** / Kyle Beach / Juraj Mikus **

Johan Franzen / Jere Lehtinen / Mikko Lehtonen

Johan Fransson / Kari Lehtonen

Ivan Vishnevskiy / Lubomir Visnovsky

Juraj Mikus ** / Zbynek Michalek***

Jeff Woywitka / Andy Wozniewski

John-Michael Liles / Andreas Lilja

Ryan Miller - Jonas Hiller

** yes, there are still two. No kidding.

***Same name, same family, different pronunciations, until Bob got used to that, then they decided to switch back to the same pronunciation, to "simplify" things. But who switched?

Also, you kind of have to picture Bob trying to intone "Michalek to Beach to Mikus" over and over again, in order to see the wisdom of Matthew Lombardi's plan...