Plus/Minus: Can you handle this?

I think it makes more sense for this week's Plus/Minus to be presented in a slightly different order than usual, so please bear with this disorganized mess.

FOR THE PLAYERS

+ I skipped the gym for like a week after I had the stomach flu. Max Pacioretty was playing NHL hockey a week after surgery. (I don't care how minor a laparoscopic appendectomy is. It's still impressive.) Seriously what does Max Pacioretty eat for breakfast, and can I be put on an IV of it?
+ Brandon Prust isn't afraid to drop the gloves when he needs to, sticks up for his linemates, and overall just earns his money. I don't even care that he hasn't gotten his damn hair cut yet.

- Stop taking dumb penalties, Ryan White. I know I usually love everything you do, but make sure you don't get sent to the box for no reason. (That almost sounds like a euphemism. It was not supposed to.)
- Stop trying to mess with everyone, Chris Neil.

FOR THE COACH

+ the Angry Michel Therrien Twitter account. Sure, it's just a disposable parody Twitter account, but we needed it.

- Don't get me wrong, I genuinely enjoy having a coach who takes winning seriously and stuff, but does he have to take everything seriously? He banned the triple-low-five, and then announced that he did so. A good coach should know that his job is done when his team wins a game. He shouldn't try to script what happens afterwards.


FOR THE SUPER BOWL (sort of)

+ I really liked that all of the featured vocal talent - Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, and Destiny's Child - was female. Yes, the national anthem has been sung by a female vocalist every year since 2008, but still. They could easily have featured some New Orleans-based talent, rather than New York icon Alicia Keys, but they didn't. (And that's cool, but... what about all that awesome New Orleans tradition?) Only a handful of female singers have headlined the halftime show in the last twenty years, and lots of people said a bunch of rude stuff about Madonna last year, so it would have been an easy choice to just go for a well-established band made up of dudes. But they went with Beyonce, who might be the hardest-working woman in showbiz. Also, CBS broke with tradition and didn't request that America the Beautiful be performed by a singer who belongs to the network, so that was pretty cool of them. I'm sure NBC appreciated the extra publicity for the new season of Smash.
+ Edited to add: During the first half, Aziz Ansari started a hashtag: #FNLSuperBowl. Basically he wrote the Super Bowl as an episode of Friday Night Lights. It was brilliant.

- Don't get me wrong, Beyonce looked great. But let's not forget that she wrote a song called "Bootylicious." And that she got a lot of credit for changing standards of beauty by (to paraphrase Tina Fey) bringing the leg meat. Yet she looked insanely thin at halftime. She had great legs, but how is anyone supposed to know whether they're ready for this jelly if there isn't any jelly of which to speak?