Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

No kidding: Nikolai Khabibulin’s Tent City menu not-so appetizing

Nikolai Khabibulin

Edmonton Oilers goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, from Russia, reacts as he lets in a goal during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Calgary Flames in Calgary, Alberta, Wednesday, April 6, 2011. The Flames won 6-1. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

AP

Having an NHL star in prison isn’t exactly a common occurrence. After all, we don’t need a counter on our sidebar here at PHT the way the guys at ProFootballTalk do when it comes to arrests. With Nikolai Khabibulin doing his time now at Tent City in Arizona for his extreme DUI and reckless driving charges, you’ll have to forgive us for being more than a little fascinated with how the whole thing plays out.

We’ve found out just what it means for Khabibulin to be at Tent City and having to wear pink boxer shorts among other pink items and spending his days doing hard labor for 12 hours at a time, we get to find out a little bit more about what goes into his accommodations in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s radical prison camp.

One wouldn’t expect that prisoners would have the greatest treatment and if you think guys in prison eat well... Think again. Michelle Thompson of Sun Media went to Tent City to examine the setup there including a taste of what it is the prisoners have to eat. Suffice to say, all the stories about how bad prison food is live up to their hype.

In a cowardly move, I started out with the safe standby, a pre-wrapped oatmeal-with-cream cookie.

It was delicious and devoured instantly.

I was less eager to bite into the rotting orange sitting beside me.

And so, it was onto the sandwich.

After taking a deep breath, I pulled open the lunch meat for a closer inspection.

It was soggy, smelled like eggs, and was covered in black specks.

The bread looked all right though.

Proceeding cautiously, I pulled out a napkin and wiped all the brown specks from the meat, before planting it inside the bun.

I stared at this creation for several minutes, wondering what type of meat I was about to ingest.

My stomach was already queasy from this unbearable Arizona heat, and chasing the sandwich with a mouthful of milk was out of the question.

Then I took a bite.

The sogginess of the meat combined with the dryness of the bread made me gag.

I struggled to swallow just that one bite, before the aftertaste of mould overpowered my tastebuds.


Come for the hard labor and pink underpants, stay for the oatmeal cookie and indigestion.

While we don’t know what Khabibulin’s normal diet is like, we have to think that rotten-looking fruit, gnarly moldy sandwiches, and Little Debbie snack cakes aren’t part of his daily regiment in the offseason. At the very least, the long, hot summer days of breaking rocks in the sun should help him take his mind off the crappy food.

If you didn’t need more lessons as to why breaking the law and drunk driving aren’t worth the trouble, Nikolai Khabibulin’s days in Sheriff Joe’s “fun” camp should provide enough reasons why you should stay on the straight and narrow.