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A Longtime NHL Star Has No Idea How To Respond To A Reporter’s Bizarre Half-Question

Postgame locker room Q&A sessions aren’t generally the most noteworthy events (unless someone loses their cool). Rare is the athlete who really wants to be there, so getting anyone to say anything of note can be a tall task to begin with – and that’s is you have a particularly interesting question to ask, which, depending on the events that unfolded in the game, you might not.

And if you don’t, things can get a little uncomfortable. You might get called out for asking a dumb question. And in rarer cases, for whatever reason, maybe you don’t have – or just find yourself unable to put the words together for – a question at all. And then, things get weird. As luck would have it, that exact scenario played out just recently for longtime Calgary Flames star Jarome Iginla,* and, well, maybe he wouldn’t call it lucky, because it was a odd sight:

No wonder he was confused – he was never actually asked any question. He just had the phrase “setting up the play” repeated at him. He was a whole lot nicer about it than a lot of people would have been, but still…can’t really expect an answer to a collection of words that seemingly came out of a generic sports phrase generator.

And yet…while we found the above clip amusing, we couldn’t laugh too much. Why not? Because if we were a reporter, this would probably represent every interaction we had an postgame Q&A sessions. (We would not last too long as a beat reporter.) The embarrassment and discomfort of others: hilarious, unless you realize that if you switched places, it would probably be your discomfort. And as much as we’d like to think otherwise, we have no doubt that, put in the same spot, the stammering, incongruous statement-”question” above could have been asked by us.

[h/t Backhand Shelf, by way of Deadspin]

*Iginla is the owner of one of sports’ – and possibly the world’s – great full names: Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis iginla. We’ll never get tired of saying and/or typing it.