#natty mac

* very interesting that there was vid of sid partying with the avs after the cup win but nate commented about it (which in itself sounds crazy w how private he seems to be on socials) and said it wasn’t true. but i went and digged the video up and it’s clearly him??😭 why do you think nate felt the need to deny it. (bc it’s weird that another team’s captain would be partying another team’s cup win that hard?)

* also i see people talking about nate’s instagram purge all the time. what is that referring to? as a newer fan i feel robbed of a time he was more active and open on socials. any idea what prompted the purge + privacy??

love your blog <3

thank you! glad you like my humble abode, come in and make yourself comfortable, mi casa es su casa!

so as for your first question, i believe what nate denied wasn’t that the person in the video was sid (it very clearly was) but that he was partying with the avs. at the time, it was more about sid’s privacy being invaded though, which is what nate was shaming bardown for. still an insane move given this was like within days of the avs winning the cup, and im sure nate shouldve had better shit to do than keyboard warrioring for sid (his phrasing was also crazy, cuz iirc he specifically said he “hadn’t seen sid in person since the start of the final” which says nothing of phone calls and implied he saw him during the third round or right before the final? crazy. i need the fic).

as for your second question: nate’s social media presence used to be pretty expansive. he live-tweeted some of the back-to-back cup runs on twitter and was a sid (pens) stan in public pretty much. and his insta was a goldmine for a while. he also switched instas at some point because he forgot the password to his old one, but even after he started the new one, he posted a lot of pics with sid from his private life etc. this changed in… i wanna say 2019? i dont remember, being a fandom old has drawbacks lol. he did a full purge and the last pic he left up was the 2017 asg game of him and sid. you can see some archived posts floating around in the annals of my blog, and also more accessibly in the original sidnate primer by emilyisobsessed

anon PLEASE write this. frothing at the mouth about it.

Okay, so first I have to clear up that those three camps are all different things.

So the Vail camp was originally a private affair organised by Andy O’Brien (with/for Sid, basically as a late-offseason altitude training camp for a week). earliest mention I could find of it is 2012, but I don’t know when Sid and Andy originally started doing it. earliest photo evidence is from summer 2013 from Nate’s nuked insta, courtesy of the original sidnate primer (the one that extensively covers everything up to 2017). They’re a small group here, but already wearing O’Brien-branded jerseys, so I’d wager they’d been doing it for a couple of years already at the time

not sure who the guy on the right is, but otherwise that’s (starting from the left): mike chiasson (known childhood friend of sid’s and longtime employee of the pens) edit: it’s roberto luongo, thanks @fairybreadevangelist for catching that, matt duchene (when he was still on the avs and friends with these guys rip), sid, nate, and the mystery goalie.

in the late 2010s it became kind of a big deal and bigger and more famous, but it’s centered around the Nova Scotian guys, and actually pretty old.

Now, as far as I know it ran until covid hit, at which point the two-year disruption led to the by-then-sizeable Vail crew joining the giant star-studded bio steel roster for 2022 and 2023 (where it was actually in Halifax).

biosteel camp, on the other hand, was a different yearly camp organised by the biosteel sports drink company for four days in toronto for toronto-based players starting in 2010 (hence it being historically attended by the likes of tyler seguin and connor mcdavid). however, biosteel filed for bankruptcy in 2023, and while they still exist in some capacity after being sold multiple times, they have not done the NHL camp in the last two years afaik.

Cwench hydration is a company that was founded in 2024, i suspect to slide into the gap that biosteel left. it was founded in part by Andy and Nate, and Andy is the brains behind it pretty much, and he also developed the drinks.

reasonable and normal. i’m forever stuck on:

[sid gigs]

nate, grinning triumphantly already bc he knows exactly how to make sid laugh (or cry, or co—[the nhl sniper gets me]): i’m gonna use your stick next season

sid: the known king of superstition; the meticulous, stubborn routine guy. of the opinion that it’s preordained fate all the way down; that luck is something beg for in morsels via offerings of habit and prayer. nate: the man who bends the future through sheer force of will. the human embodiment of tenacity and free will.

ok are you ready? are you seated? let’s go

so in february 2020 right before the pandemic hit, the avs held a charity auction via their WAG charity organisation, called Avs’ Better Halves. The idea was that each player makes a custom basket with their partner full of their favourite everyday items, people bid on the baskets, the money goes to charity.

well, nate who was allegedly single at the time decided not to build a solo basket like some other players on the team and instead we got the

buddy basket

what is the buddy basket, you might ask? well, of course, with no explanation whatsoever, the partner basket was full of merch of both nate and sid. and like, some dog toys i guess.

the crazy thing about it is that the sid jersey included a certificate of authenticity from the pittsburgh penguins, and the reason that’s my roman empire is that this means that sid had to GO TO HIS TEAM, ask if he could take part in another team’s WAG charity auction and if he could include his merch and ALSO could they give him a certificate of authenticity pretty please.