#he’s kind of just enormous and friendly. locker room vibes guy!!

[moregraceful]

NASHVILLE PREDATORS SIGNED MY BOY JASPER WEATHERBY!!!! 2 WAY CONTRACT!!!!!!

preds fans do you want a vibe check….frankly he’s probably going to spend most if not all of the season in the AHL, but he’s one of my all time favorite fringe ahl locker room guys that has ever graced the Barracuda organization in my time here in hell dot ca dot gov (…2 years) so i GOTTA hype my guy

1. his parents are progressive hippies. his grandparents are civil rights lawyers — his grandma marched in Selma and his grandpa worked for the ACLU (his grandpa is Jewish and his family left Britain during WWII and moved to the states and this left such a huge impact on the family’s politics over all.) in the NCAA in North Dakota, he knelt for the anthem!! He has a black brother who was adopted from Costa Rica. He gets it. He did not kneel for the anthem in AHL or NHL but when you’re a fringe player at best and your call-ups are basically determined by how many franchise players have covid at any given moment, you can’t really risk the kind of attention kneeling would bring 😩 he’s like pedigree hockey moron who was raised in a progressive-leftist family who has been challenged again and again from birth to look more critically race in the US. we love to see it!!

2. Also a gay ally….he was on the Sharks’ beat lone podcast last year during June and the interviewer ended the interview with like, hey do you have anything you’d like to say or any people you’d like to shout out and he was like well, “a big thing on my mind is that it’s Pride Month” (direct quote) and he talked about how he’s glad to see NHL and junior clubs celebrating pride. Jasper Weatherby loves the gays really for real

3. Huge locker room guy. HUGE locker room guy. I have seen the Barracuda on double-digit loss streaks and like that was BAD but like…I mean we had an 8 game losing streak last winter, I have still never seen the team as depressed as they were when Jasper got traded (for my beloved Crisco, noted bisexual/bisexual ally, who, being a vibes guy himself, immediately went on a hatty watch to cheer them up). apparently some of the guys were BONKERS upset but none more than our number one prospect William Eklund, for whom Weatherby was the golden retriever to his cheetah threatening to go crazy in his enclosure, and who, first game post-Jasper trade, I watched play with increasing concern for his mental stability

4. I am not making this a great hits of the William Eklund/Jasper Weatherby story or this post will devolve into chaos, however, I will note that the young guys on the Cuda seemed to have an attitude of like that’s WEATHER we LOVE him and generally seemed to treat him as their emotional support dog. The one thing I will say about William Eklund (Swedish first rounder) is that the kid showed up at prospect camp right out of the gate and Jasper apparently ID’d him as…idk kid who needed a touch of home, so he. took Eklund to ikea. Hello small Swedish teenager, you look nervous would you like to go to Ikea?? And William was in love with him from that moment on. So hopefully that kind of maternal touch carries on in Nashville or Milwaukee, where he just tries hard to make the young guys feel comfortable and at home. (The guys also loved his dog, whose name is Larry.)

5. Generally just kind of goofy and protective. Usually has a big smile. On ice, one time I was eavesdropping on the season ticket holders sitting behind me while he was on the power play and one of them mused “there’s Jasper in front of the net…he’s such a distraction” and his partner said “he really is.” Big boy is 6’3 and generally just. huge. Despite his size, usually you don’t have to worry about him doing particularly stupid shit but in one of the most iconic days in San Jose Barracuda history last year, he started a line brawl PRE-WHISTLE and eight players got game misconducts before the game even started and our head coach got fined like $25k. the best part is NO ONE outside of the team knows what happened, the team closed ranks and coaching staff refused to comment on it to media. Jasper, notably one of the calmest guys on the team, just went apeshit one day. And us the fanbase just went well, if Jasper was mad he probably had a good reason.

I think he probably destined to be career AHLer and you likely won’t see him in Nashville for his whole career unless some kind of disaster befalls Nashville’s NHL locker room and/or front office this year, however I am really excited that he landed somewhere because I was worried!! And I’m glad he landed in Nashville because the vibes are on the move!! if he ends up in a locker room with Luke Prokop, it’s going to be a gays-only event. (Also going to very funny. Prokop is taller than Jasper and can certainly take care of himself, but big brother Jasper Weatherby will be READY to HELP if Luke needs a grocery store buddy.) If he ends up in a locker room with Luke Prokop and Tyson Barrie and Roman Josi….first of all catch me cryin in the club if he makes it to the NHL again, second of all, it will be the most aggressively queer and queer-allied locker room. I love him. I miss him so much. I hope he goes full protective big brother on Luke in Milwaukee, because it will be inCREDIBLY funny to watch a 6’3 dude be the emotional support golden retriever for a 6’5 dude.