There is an expression on Sardang.

Zaflat O! Wani Porbluob Deef Nowk.

While it is difficult to translate into words that a human can understand, it can be loosely interpreted as "When one does see go hairy leg, it zoom around twice."

Those words could certainly not be any more true for Narboza Manyhands as he looks back on his first season with the Vancouver Whalers.

There was quite the learning curve for Narboza as he began to play his first games with the team.  Training camp went well, and he felt like he was adjusting to the new human culture of the city. There were certainly some things that took some getting used to. 

For starters, Narboza was constantly taken aback at how Vancouver residents talked about bike lanes.  Now, Narboza found the very concept of riding a bike to be absurd right from the start, but knowing that it had some sort of cultural significance, he had come to terms with the fact that the quaint, yet inefficient, form of transportation, was taken by so many people.  What he still was unable to understand was why people would argue, aggressively at times, about how the cities entire infrastructure must be bent and formed around the ability for tiny little lanes to be constructed for people to use these bikes.  The clan leaders of the city would often yell and scream at each other in their clan hall (called city hall) about this issue, and many of the older members of society would mock and make fun of the younger humans who rode their bicycles around the city in the little lanes.  Sardang did not have such an odd cultural phenomenon and he was still struggling with how to come to terms with it.

Next.  Rain.

Now, Sardang has rain.  Some parts of the planet exist in a near permanent state of rain. However, it was with a begrudging acceptance that Sardangians lived in those areas, often cursing the rain. Not in Vancouver.  It could be pouring down rain, with rivers washing away their homes, and Vancouver residents would be smiling and saying things like "It could be worse!  I might have to live in Alberta!" while happily thumping each other on the backs and laughing.  They seem to have all sorts of names for the rain, and different descriptions for it.  It quickly became clear that Narboza would need an entire chapter in his 'Introduction to Earth for Sardangians' manual, which discussed this very topic.  There would need to be a subsection on umbrella etiquette once he understood all the rules.  Already he had been yelled at by a grey hair for having his umbrella open in a store.  It was a tricky dance.

Finally, there were all the smaller cultural bits and pieces that Narboza was yet too really grasp.  Residents would mention The Roxy with a sly wink and funny little humans wearing lumberjack shirts and carrying craft beer would argue about whether Granville Street was a disgusting hell hole worthy of destruction, or just ahead of its time and eventually the "rest of you heathens will understand"  They also often talked about how they would win some sort of trophy called Stanley's Cup.  It seems like this item is similar to the Four Star Cup, but Vancouver is not allowed to win it. 

Thankfully Narboza had his mating partners to assist in the learning curve, and often they would transate thhe Vancouver dialect into something that he could understand so that he could update his documentation on the human race. When Vancouver residents mocked Alberta, what they really meant was "We feel insecure about our own failures and need to project hate upon those who are different than us".  When they laughed at Toronto residents stating that they are the center of the earth (a strange expression since they could not exist if they were), what they really meant was "We feel insecure about our own failures and need to project hate upon those who are different than us". At least this is what Zebulon Leavitt told Narboza, and he trusted him.

All in all, Narboza very much enjoyed his first season with the Whalers.  Team spirit was high, and though he was unable to experience human emotions, he would often feign a smile in an attempt to fit in.  While many of his mating partners slept he also had a great many opportunities to conduct research that was badly needed.  Since he rarely needed to regenerate for as many hours as the humans did he had ample opportunities to sneak into their rooms and extract valuable information from their flesh. 

On one particular night he managed to scrape an entire layer of skin off of Nikolaj Boyle's neck - without even waking him up.  He was very proud of that moment!

Of course, while Narboza's main mission was to learn about the human race and develop a manual for his people when they arrived, he also had a chance to enjoy the sport that humans called ice hockey. It too had all kinds of quirks that took some getting used to, but he flung himself head first into the task, sucking in as much data as he could to speed up the process.  The results were not immediately positive.  Throughout his first season Manyhands was constantly walked around and his defensive play was abysmal.  By the end of the regular season he was sporting the second worst plus/minus record in the entire league and his team was near the bottom of the standings.  At first he blamed the rules for his struggles, as he was not allowed to tear off limbs or concuss other enemies at will.  Humans were an incredibly breakable species and he needed to be gentle, lest he damage his research and render it useless. He found himself tentative and unwilling to try and hit them, for fear of creating a mess on the ice.  As the regular season wore down he needed to have a heart to heart (or in his case an encased splasmoid to heart) with the coach of the team.  They needed him to be better, and so he needed to be just a touch ore aggressive on the ice.  Narboza relished the opportunity.

In the playoffs Narboza managed to adapt, and he was a plus player on the ice, despite playing some tough competition on a regular basis and averaging over 19 minutes of ice time a night.  His game still had many flaws, and he struggled with offense, but for now he seemed to be enjoying the defensive side of the game. By the time the team was finally eliminated, Nabroza had started to feel like he was slowly understanding some of the trickier parts of the game that had eluded him during the regular season.

The offseason is going to be extremely busy for the Sardangian, as he has plans to abduct and extract DNA from the first of many players down the road, in his quest to crate the league's first superplayer.  There are many promising candidates but he has narrowed it down to one and is excitedly setting up a time to carry out the task.

On top of that, there is the SHL draft coming up as well.  With no expectations, and no idea what other human cities may be like, he is excited to see where he ends up, and what sort of tests he can carry out there as well.  Year One was a success!

1256 words.

"On one particular night he managed to scrape an entire layer of skin off of Nikolaj Boyle's neck - without even waking him up. He was very proud of that moment!"

so thats what that was

Kyle Sux Lmap