Image Courtesy: instagram.com/sandramarysays

Injured Pittsburgh Penguins forward Bryan Rust won halloween.

This weekend the second year forward dressed up as a hot dog – not a sandwich – labelled with a sign that said ‘Property of Phil’. 

The costume is in reference, of course, to a controversial Steve Simmons column following Phil Kessel’s trade out of Toronto this past summer. In that column Simmons wrote a lede about Kessel having an afternoon habit of guzzling down a couple of dogs, using that launching pad to segue into a point about how the Leafs could no longer stomach Kessel’s personality.

It was, probably, the single funniest media controversy in recent Toronto sports history. And it got even more surreal when the Pension Plan Puppets crew went about making a compelling argument that the charge was probably false, and during the process found that Kessel’s phone number was publicly listed in the Toronto phone book.

Rust’s costume itself is perfect, and also not a sandwich. It mocks Kessel gently, but the real target is the insane media environment that Kessel lived in everyday in Toronto. That Kessel had a good enough sense of humour to pose with Rust for this photo makes the entire thing even better.

S/T to Navin Vaswani at theScore.