French hockey team’s player photos will haunt your dreams

If there's one place where the NHL completely misses an opportunity to showcase some creativity, it's in their player photos. Most pictures are two shades away from being passport-approved, with the player staring blankly into the camera. The most you might get is a scowl. Only a handful of guys bring accessories (Sean Avery once sported a trendy pair of glasses, for instance) or go out of their way to look ferocious (pre-haircut Brent Burns come to mind).

What they really need, if you ask me, are more chains, steampunk goggles, and blood-stained teeth chests -- like the terrifying dude at the top of this post. That's Stephane Gervais, a defenseman for the Brûleurs de loups (Wolf Burners) of the French League.

And that is his official player photo.

And here's the one for forward Toby LaFrance, who we can assume recently got back from Thunderdome.

Like Gervais, LaFrance carried around a chain, what for choking fools. To death, bro.

Every player on the team has taken one of these photos, and you can see the whole gallery here. I'm partial to Caesar Joffre, who seems quite pleased with his chain.

We'll assume he took it from a carcass.

Pierre-Luc Lessard's "unhinged pilot" look is pretty amazing too:

NHL headshots need more tongue. Way more tongue.

Prior to these incredible photos, the Wolf Burners' biggest claim to fame was employing Cristobal Huet for a few years in the mid-90s.

The Wolf Burners is, by the way, an awesome name for a team. Not the Wolves. The WolfBurners. According to folklore in Grenoble, where the team resides, one night in the mid-seventeenth century, the townspeople decided they had had it with wolves coming after their livestock. So they cornered a pack of wolves in the forest and burned them alive. The team is named after that tale of triumph and their logo is literally a wolf on fire.

Anyway. More photos. Jason Crossman went for nomad that would like to choke you, if possible.

And forward Julien Baylacq went for "guy that carries all the other evil guys' equipment", for some reason.

Even in a post-apocalyptic world, Baylacq remains a good teammate.

Amar Baptiste has shoulder spikes and a spear.

Good luck surviving a battle in the corner with this guy, and I mean that literally -- go after that puck and you will die.

And finally, Nicolas Antonoff seems slightly more approachable.

I think he may have misunderstood what sort of shoot this was. Nice neckwear, Nicolas.

s/t to Jamie (@Canamjam) for the tip