(Sung to the tune of “Lisa Simpson’s Union Strike Song”)
Come gather ’round children, it is high time ye learned,
The burden of Andrei, and how his dreams have burned.
* * *
Taken out of Russia, only one team he knows,
Though they’ll never play him, wasting talent with glee.
Unless a bad limb or an appendix explodes,
Broods Andrei in Manchester, a ward of hockey.
* * *
He gets a chance to play for it all, “Oh! What luck!”
But he’ll learn the hard way there is no “team” in “we,”
His back stabbed with a Dremel, and not on the Cup,
Broods Andrei in Manchester, a ward of hockey.
* * *
“Alas, to the Motherland. They won’t interdict,”
He cheers. “Return like Malkin, Semyon, and Kovi.”
Forsook there as well, like a bad Hollywood script,
Broods Andrei in Manchester, a ward of hockey.
* * *
So among all the Monarchs, a King without pay,
Like Sisyphus in Hades, penitentiary.
He, more than anyone, hopes for a league one day,
Broods Andrei in Manchester, a ward of hockey.
* * *
He’ll play day and night by the Merrimack River,
Andrei is the cattle, so he has no power.