Tim Hortons’ hockey card pack is the best Halloween costume
Candy and a Sidney Crosby card awaits you
Art by Kristen Frier
The month of Halloween is still going strong, from AMC’s “Fear Fest” giving us horror movie re-runs to pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks. However, costume ideas are on everyone’s minds and the hockey season is in full swing. So, I suggest you dress up as a hockey card pack to satisfy both.
Hockey fans have their jerseys, you have your hockey pack costume to give you all the luck in the world to find that ever elusive Sidney Crosby card — the Holy Grail of Tim Hortons’ collectible series.
We all wish we could reach into that three-card pack to pull out the colourful, tin-foiled paper with Crosby’s face on it, except we can’t because he was never there — again. Sadly, obtaining Crosby is starting to feel like a pipe dream. But have no fear, because your hockey pack costume is here.
Trick-or-treaters want to be the Mandalorian or Jason Voorhees. In other words, nothing original. It takes real courage to put on a human-sized card pack that everyone will mistake for mail. It takes even more courage to follow your ambition that goes beyond sweets. Why stop at candy when you can buy a pack at your local Tim’s?
Picture this: you’re shamelessly still in your card pack costume, you order a pumpkin spice latte and hockey cards late at night. All the trick-or-treaters are already home enjoying their sugar-coated journeys to the nightmare on dental street. Not you though, you made it your life’s mission to get that Crosby card.
All the candy in the world will be as pointless as slasher remakes if you can’t slapshot a miracle past that goalie of disappointment into that net of card-collecting obsession.
You take a seat near a couple sighing heavily at this big envelope beside them. They’re just trying to get away from all the costumed brats for a night. Your peripherals also sense the cashier staring at you, a young adult still buying cards meant for kids, but so what? Crosby needs you.
You rip open the pack and it comes in this order: Nathan MacKinnon, Wayne Gretzky, and there he is in all his Pittsburgh Penguins glory — you finally pulled Crosby. Wasting all that pocket change on shiny paper was worth it. The hockey angels clap in a frenzy of pucks, sticks, and expired hot cocoa.
You jump for joy, spilling your latte on the floor in childish fashion. The cashier’s jaw dropped. He notices the pumpkin-spiced crime scene on the floor. Cue a head shake and a big sigh from this employee that signals, “I went to UBC, now I have to clean up liquefied pumpkin, all thanks to a giant flyer.”
Again, you don’t care. That hockey pack costume got you the golden goal of your life. Crosby can now take his rightful place in your dusty card album collection and be a home for the cobweb-topia in your attic.
Dressing up like a hockey card pack for luck sounds superstitious, but then again, we all know people who practice overtime shots while imagining Crosby cheering them on, so it’s not that odd. Everyone has their hockey superstitions, but a hockey card pack costume always works.
