Dear Hockey Gods . . . .

Never underestimate the power of prayer. That's what my grandmother taught me. She is 97 years old. That's good enough for me.

My grandmother subscribes to the belief that prayer works better when you get as many people as possible praying for the same things. This takes the prayer and gives it a higher priority in the queue. In modern terms, you need to try to get the prayer to go "viral" and get it to "trend", which in turn gives the prayer more of a fighting chance to be heard. Think about it, at any given time there might be a billion different prayers going on. So if there are hundreds or thousands of people saying the same prayer, it's got a better chance to rise above the din.

I hear laughing. Did I mention that my grandma is 97? What have we got to lose? If your answer is meaningful games in March, a playoff spot and a significant amount of free chili then we're on the same page. So with that in mind, let's coordinate our praying efforts and make sure we are all leveraging economies of scale by praying for the same thing. We need to take this one day at a time, so here is my proposed Hockey Gods Prayer for February 11th:

Dear Hockey Gods, who art in hockey heaven, praise and glory to you when it comes to all things hockey. Give us this day a win for the following teams, and forgive us for any hockey trespasses, as we forgive those who have made hockey trespasses against us (yes, even Matt Cooke). Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil (which should be a little easier tonight since Adam Foote is not playing).

• Boston over Detroit
• New Jersey over San Jose
• Dallas over Chicago
• Anaheim over Calgary
• St. Louis over Minnesota (and please no three point game in this one)
• and Columbus over Colorado

 Amen.

For those of you new to this praying thing, it helps to hold your hands like this:

My grandmother might lecture me about praying to false Gods but 1) if Grandma were a hockey fan I think she would understand and 2) I'm counting on the fact that she isn't going to see this. Plus, with all the serious shit going down in Egypt and what not, we don't want to clog up the main prayer lines to The Big Guy in The Sky. Thus, I'm hoping (and praying!) that we're OK with this. But I should at least provide you with the following disclaimer: Saying this prayer could result in your sin card getting hole-punched and might ultimately lead to a trip to hell (the real one, not Detroit). Accordingly, just in case this backfires, we might want to reevaluate this strategy after the weekend.

Release the prayer hounds.

And God bless you Grandma Dee. I love you with all my being.

UPDATE: This photo of "Hockey Baby Jesus" was submitted by reader zekebud. It might help to print it out and have it in front of you when you say your prayer.