I didn’t say he should be. I meant he’s lucky some over-officious asshole didn’t see this as a chance to make a bullshit statement.

I am sorry, but that fish does not look fileted. Perhaps there is a little regional confusion over the meaning of ‘filet.’ It does look run over, I’ll give you that, but a filet tends to look a lot less gutty and heady and a lot more foody.

“Trumped up charges” seems destined to take on a whole new meaning soon enough.

To recap: man spends $350 on a ticket to a hockey game, buys catfish in Tennessee, sprays it with Old Spice and chucks it into a cooler, drives that cooler to his relatives’ house near Pittsburgh, filets it, repeatedly runs over it with his car, essentially stuffs said dead squashed catfish near his crotch, travels to…

You picked that and not the part where he ran it over with his car a few times to compress it?

Catfish are not sensitive or intelligent. They sit on the lake/river bed and eat whatever fits in their mouths. Okay, maybe that describes me, too.

it’s never acceptable to toss any sensitive, intelligent animal’s body onto the ice during a hockey game.

Documentation, in case it changes for some reason:

Spelled moron wrong.

Hold the charges over his head until the series is over, then drop them graciously. Don’t want to encourage any more of this while the Final is ongoing.

Not if the catfish consents.

I call bullshit. Real rednecks don’t waste catfish.

A self-aware dumb redneck. Capture him and use him for science.

To the editor responsible for the Recommended Stories decision: I thank you from the bottom of my now-lightened heart.

Sometimes I root for the Predators, but I usually root for Chris Hansen.

The real MVP: The algorithm that decided all the Manti Te’o articles were related to throwing a catfish on the ice.

Catfish can really ruin a life. Nothing to joke about.

I think he’s lucky considering the proximity to the Manchester bombing and the fact that people are extremely wary of people who manage to sneak thinks into crowded arenas right now. He could have been charged with a lot worse than he got away with.

Nobody better tell PETA about how he got the “sensitive, intelligent” catfish skull to fit into the vacuum seal using the SUV.

Waddell definitely is being treated unfairly with the criminal charges, but at least he should be happy with the press covfefe he’s received so far.