Too many men...wait, that's a bad thing?

You arrive at a meeting early and the Senior VP is there too. You have to make small talk until everyone else arrives. What to do? Mention the beautiful weather we've been having? Come on, you can do better than that! What you need is the male equivalent of "Glee was pretty preachy this week, huh?" What you need is a sporty conversation starter.

SUCH AS: In these playoffs, there have been a TON of too many men on the ice penalties.

In hockey, each team has a goalie and 5 players on the ice at one time. The 5 players only play for 30 to 40 seconds at a time, then they "change" for fresh players from the bench.

Sometimes there can be some confusion about who's on and who's off when they're changing, and more than 5 players end up on the ice for a few seconds. If they're caught the referee can call a penalty. It's kind of a silly, annoying, pointless penalty to take, and it's pretty rare. In last year's entire playoffs there were only 17 too many men on the ice calls. This year there have been 27, including 2 last night in Vancouver's loss to Chicago. And we're only in the second round!

Lots of people are talking about that and wondering what's up. So if you say "2 more too many men on the ice penalties last night, huh?" you're bound to fill your minute of awkward silence, without one mention of the weather.