Manoir

I thought he handled himself extremely well in that interview. Phoenix has the potential to be a great hockey market. As someone mentioned in this thread, it was really Gretzky who brought this team down by bringing in his buddies whether it was Barnett as GM or a way past his prime Claude Lemieux as a player. Remember how everyone used to say hockey will never work in Carolina?Now they have one of the loudest buildings in the league. People forget that Winnipeg was averaging 10,000 fans for the last 6-7 years of their existence, and that was with zero competition from any other sport (unless you think the CFL is a real sport). Bettman in right on when he states that one man cannot dictate where a franchise should be moved. Imagine if 5 Western teams were in trouble and 5 guys all decided to move them eastward, it would be a logistical nightmare for the league. If anything, it was Ron Maclean who looked foolish in the interview, especially with the whole salary cap discussion.

Roadrunner. Then you can have the iconic "Beep Beep" sound when he scores at home.

Has anyone noticed that a lot of Penguins eventually go on to play for the Wings. Must be something about that organization that drives them to Detroit. Here's a list off the top of my head. Scotty Bowman Ken Wregget Paul Coffey Larry Murphy Dmitri Mironov Jason Woolley Mike Ramsay Frederik Olausson Jiri Slegr Cory Cross Ulf Samuelsson Luc Robitaille Doug Brown Bob Errey Tomas Sandstrom Mikael Samuelsson Robert Lang

When is Crosby's contract up? His favorite player growing up was Yzerman who may be the Wings GM by the time Crosby's contract expires.

Pens fans are very intelligent, they think Maxime Talbot should be considered for the Conn Smythe.

Man, I hate the Penguins (also known as the team that is only good because they had top draft picks for like 7 years in a row).

I'm so sick of Pens fans complaining about Hossa. Just be glad that your team was in the right place at the right time and got a chance to draft Crosby and Malkin or else the Penguins would be extinct.

I believe it all started in that shocking San Jose series of '94. Ciccarelli and Coffey complained that Bowman wasn't letting his offence loose and was instead stressing defensive play too much. They both believed that Detroit's offence was capable of pummeling the Sharks.

I've watched a lot of Pens games and they are not very impressive in any area. They have 2 superstars, that's it. The team looks good because they play in the horrible Eastern conference. The best d-man they've faced so far is an injured Kimmo Timonen. If it wasn't for the schedule the Wings would have had a real easy time.

Has there ever been back-to- back games in the finals? I don't recall that ever happening. Even if the Penguins had more injuries I would be against this schedule. This is the Finals, no reason to have 3 games in 4 nights.

First time in my life I was cheering against the Wings. Now they have to play 3 games in 4 nights with a far from healthy lineup against a very motivated opponent. It is so crucial to win game 1.

I was just thinking, after the tough Anaheim series and all the injury problems, having the Cup finals start next week may not be so bad. As an added bonus, it gives the media ample time to hype up Crosby/Malkin and the Pens may start to believe the publicity. I have a bad feeling about the Wings having only 2 days off and then having to play back to back against a team that breezed through the semis.

Here I thought I had a brilliant idea, I guess not many agree. Oh well, the people have spoken.

I'm only 33 and I love the Roadrunner cartoons. I was gonna post something similar but thought it would be lame, I'm glad you did though!!!

The East is such a garbage conference.

I'm a Canadian but I hate it whenever there is an Amerian franchise that is in trouble and the reaction is to move the team to Winnipeg or Quebec City. Phoenix used to play to packed houses, I vividly remember their series against the Wings in'98 and the place was insane with the white-out. Chicago and Boston were playing in front of 5,000 fans until recently. We all know about the Wings attendance problems.The Penguins were dead last in attendance in the early part of the decade. Most franchises go through phases of attendance and I'm sure that a couple of winning seasons will bring back the fans in Phoenix. I don't know how many people know this, but in the early 90's Edmonton was drawing less than 10,000 fans a game. I hate it when a southern US team is having problems drawing fans it is immediately attributed to lack of enthusiasm for hockey in general in the area. The writers never explain why San Jose and Dallas have traditionally drawn very well despite being non-hockey markets.

I read this article and it mentions that Richmond VA and Fort Myers FL.were among the top cities who watched game 6 of the finals. I find it a bit odd considering they don't have a franchise and they beat out New york, Boston, etc. http://www.dailygazette.com/weblogs/schott...-finals-rating/ excerpt The game delivered a 37.4/51 in Pittsburgh, and a 30.6/45 in Detroit. The other top markets were Buffalo (10.9/16), Denver (6.6/11), St. Louis (5.7/9), Richmond, Va. (5.6/9), Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio (5.5/9 each)and Minneapolis and Fort Myers, Fla.(5.1/10 each).

Thanks. They should really implement a more accurate system, is it that hard for each station to know how many total number of viewers are watching instead of using such as a small sample? The obvious conclusion form this is that the NHL needs to expand into Richmond VA and Fort Myers Fl.

I also doubted the team. I will never double guess Holland ever again.

I thought Pittsburgh would win this series from the start, so I don't know if I count as a doubter. I told my friends that this series will come down to the fact that the Penguins role players like Malone, Staal, Talbot, etc are a lot younger and bigger than the Wings role players like Draper, Maltby, and Drake. For me that is/was the key. Hopefully, I will be wrong.

I could have used you guys in the thread entitled, "Penguins Franchise deserves no credit."

The Penguins are proof that the way the draft works is really not fair, especially in the salary cap era. I say all 30 picks in the 1st round of the draft should be randomly selected, each team gets a 1/30 chance of getting the top pick. The Penguins suck for 5 years, get all those picks and now are suddenly one of the best, doesn't seem fair for all those other teams that were actually trying to win. The fact that there is a cap now means teams getting those high picks benefit even more because for the first couple of years they have those players for a relatively low salary. The fact that there is a cap now has taken away the excuse that a small market team can only build through the draft. I hate the Penguins.

Because the supporting cast always looks better when you have such a great top5 nucleus. If the Penguins didn't have Crosby/Malkin, you wouldn't know who Talbot is. If you look at the supporting cast of the Pens, would you say they are far superior to the supporting cast of most other teams? In today's parity NHL, in most cases it'll be the top 5 that is going to seperate the top teams from the rest. In the Penguins case, their nucleus was not the result of any great skill on managements' part, they had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time. Did they break the rules?No. Do I blame the Pens for taking those players?No. I'm just saying that in my opinion the system is unfair. Yes, everyone had a chance to get crosby. However, teams like the Pens had a 3X greater chance than some other teams. That's not what I propose. I think a draft in which every team has an equal shot at the #1 pick is the way to go. Here is why I feel this way. Take Chicago and Vancouver. Most would agree that over the years the Canucks have done a better job at building a team than the Hawks. However, the way the draft works the Hawks now have Kane and Toews to build around and the Canucks are kind of stuck in no man's land. The Canucks roster is not good enough to make the teams amongst the league's elite and not bad enough to get the top 5 picks. So their only hope of moving into elite status is try to make a tarde for a franchise player(very had to do) or find some players that have been overlooked in the draft (again very hard to accomplish). So why should should a team that has done an inferior job be rewarded with franchise players? Now you take Pittsburgh and the situation is even worse, they had 4 consecutive top 2 picks, it's like having Kane and Toews and adding 2 superstars along with them. Poor Vancouver.

Finally, someone who gets it.

The Columbus example does not hold. To my knowledge they have had only 2 top 5 picks in recent times and only one was #1 overall(Nash) and the other was #4(Zherdev). Pittsburgh has had 4 with 2#1 overall(Flkeury,Crosby), and 2#2 overall(Malkin, Staal). You can even make a case that Pittsburgh hasn't even drafted that well, they took JOrdan Staal over Toews and Fleury over Eric Staal. My point is no one has had that many top 5 picks in succession and they got lucky that those drafts had a lot of good top end talent so it was hard to screw up a top 2 pick.