Buffalo Sabres F Zemgus Girgensons gets a birthday paddling from teammates

Buffalo Sabres forward Zemgus Girgensons has made great strides in his rookie season. Girgensons' emergence as a physical top-six forward on an often over-matched club has been doubly impressive due to his relative youth, as the Latvian international only turned 20-years-old this past Sunday. 

At Monday's Sabres practice, Girgensons and his teammates celebrated the rookie forward's milestone birthday with a ritual not unlike one that the fictional Stonecutters club from the classic Simpsons episode "Homer the Great" once dubbed "the Unblinking Eye":

Afterwards, presumably, Girgenson's turned around and went through the gauntlet once more, to complete a different ritual called "the Wreck of the Hesperus."