Photo: @CapsYapp
Ahead of Game Two, one bold Caps fan brought a fluorescent pink sign to Verizon Center. Written haphazardly in marker and in all-caps, the message read “SHUT UP PIERRE.” The fan held this sign near NBC commentator Pierre McGuire during warm-ups. It was a hit online.
And apparently it has started a revolution.
https://twitter.com/AndyCole84/status/726585018437365760
During the game, reader Michael asked us if we’d make a t-shirt. I obliged. The internet rejoiced again.
The next step, however, I did not anticipate. Caps fan Brennan Reidy had the phrase tattooed on his body by local tatoo artist Jordan Bruch. First reported by @CapsYapp, Reidy had the work done at the popular Body Gallery in Sterling, Virginia.
I needed to know the details.
“Actually he’s a good friend of mine,” Bruch explained to me Thursday night. “I’ve known him since we were young. We’ve been Caps fans all through the years.”
“I had an all-day appointment cancel on me and he happened to swing by the shop and hang out,” Bruch continued. “We talked about the series and the playoffs all around. Then he mentioned your shirts about Pierre. We both despise Pierre and any critique from the analysts at NBCSN.”
And that’s when it struck Reidy. Lately, he’s been getting tattoos for a hockey-themed leg. He recently had praying hockey gloves added to the side of his calf, as well as crossing hockey sticks and a banner that says Lord Stanley. Ahead of Game Five, Reidy wanted to switch things up. Why not include a fun salute to one of the sport’s most notorious analysts too?
“I said I’d do it for free if he was serious,” Bruch said.
Reidy was 100% serious.
“There was no better time, and no better person to work this into a hockey-themed limb,” Reidy told me. “There was not one ounce of regret during the entire 15-minute ordeal. I’m simply speaking out for hundreds of thousands of hockey fans through a simple, shut up.”
Bruch shaved the bottom of his friend’s leg and got to work. He inked the shut up pierre in a simple typewriter font, a nod to McGuire’s profession. Bruch placed it on the front of Reidy’s shin, near the top of his sock line.
https://twitter.com/CapsYapp/status/727981499161710592
Reidy has several other designs planned, but he hasn’t gotten a Caps tattoo yet.
“Not until they win a cup,” he said.
