This video of a puppy ‘practicing’ with a hockey team is insanely adorable

I’ll be honest. Mostly as a result of growing up in Hawaii, I have never watched much hockey. But after watching the National Hockey League’s newest recruit, I might have to start.

The front office for the St. Louis Blues hockey team decided to adopt a puppy for the next 18 months from an organization that trains service dogs. The puppy, named Barclay, will get basic obedience training from the team, learn basic socialization and, of course, practice just generally being cute:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqk3H65DZLb/

In addition to his service training, Barclay is also apparently getting in some hockey practice. The pup took the ice with some Blues players for a practice on Dec. 13 and, thankfully, somebody recorded it because the resulting video is the DAAAAW-est thing in history:

Barclay shows off some solid moves and puck tracking, and even shows remarkably skilled stick handling, despite the fact that he does not have hands.

Eventually, Barclay just picks up the puck with his mouth and carries it off before trying to bury it in some snow. Which is frankly a play the Blues should try to execute in a real game.

The video has more than 6,000 retweets while an Instagram post of the video has more than 13,000 likes.

I think the next step is pretty obvious. Forget Alex Ovechkin and Gritty. We need puppies to become the faces of hockey. Every NHL team needs to find a puppy ASAP and take it to practice and make adorable videos. Some other teams already have the puppies. Get on board, everyone else!

Oh, and you know how we have the Puppy Bowl? Yeah, clearly we now need to have the Puppy Cup: a bunch of puppies decked out in jerseys running around on the ice chasing a puck. And then they get to pose with Lord Stanley. And suddenly, every person in the world is a hockey fan.

Barclay knows what’s up.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrYEcJDnGtq/

[h/t: USA Today]