Cern

17000 fairweathers 64 games in a row. You must be so proud.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/attendance?year=2004 Pittsburgh 2002 = 22nd Pittsburgh 2003 = 25th Pittsburgh 2004 = 30th Compare that to the Lightning this year, who had an absolutely abysmal season yet still had a top-ten home-ice following. You can't even use Mellon Arena's small size as an excuse - Rexall Place is even smaller yet the Oilers eased into the top half of the league in attendance the same year the Penguins were hitting rock bottom. Pittsburgh abandoned their team until the rational notion of moving the franchise dropped on them.

He could, gee, I don't know, refuse the occasional advertising promotion? Tell people "Hey you know what, my numbers are pretty good, but I don't think you give players like Ovechkin enough credit, maybe you should try turning to him for a couple things. Hell, I even lost the Calder trophy to him"? He's given more than enough of a podium to speak from, he just needs to SPEAK UP instead of bending over and taking it all for chrissake. He can't force people to follow what he says but he could at least make an effort to try. Instead it's just yet another rubber stamp for a drink-gatorade-and-score-on-Toskala ad, yet another complete and utter failure to stir up any variety into the promotion of the league.

Go to NHL.com's shop and use the jersey customization page, you get image previews of what it'll look like. The C/A is reduced to about half-size and smushed in to the left of the SC patch. Which means that even if you DO get this patch on its own, it's pointless to sew it on in its proper place if you have a jersey that already has a C/A. Why they didn't just put it on the shoulder I have no idea.

Uh, no they didn't. Pittsburgh was dead last in the league for game attendance until after the lockout.

Lemieux, Chelios, and Zetterberg aren't the solitary poster child of the NHL. Sidney is. For someone who is the one and only player-ambassador for the entire league, I would hope he'd carry himself with a little more class. Instead he justifies the overwhelmingly prevailing notion among the US of hockey being a joke.

Crosby is welcome to be called the next Greztky. Unless he starts getting justifiably called the next Bobby Orr it dosen't impress me all that much.

As a Canadian, I hate that everyone north of the 49th is getting shafted by the NHL in preference for Miami Beach and Atlanta. All the NHL is doing as far as I'm concerned is making itself increasingly clear it dosen't want Canadian/non-fringe interest in the game, because I'm not seeing a 'compromise' occuring here as much as a shunning. Which makes sense given the NHL's mindset - ultimately there are more people in the States that could potentially be turned onto hockey than those already tuned in. So we allow more and more 'potential' hockey markets in instead of ones chomping at the bit for easy, local access to the NHL because hey, why get instant and continuous profits in a hockey-crazed market when we can sit around with our thumbs up our assess for twenty years waiting for Atlanta to start giving a f*** about hockey? And now we get a diving whiner as the solitary face of the entire league. What a wonderful message being sent out to a population who already consider hockey a joke of a sport when we could use a player who actually has some class to his game like Ovechkin. The WHL feels more and more appealing every season since the lockout - I'd prefer obscurity to what the NHL is insisting on doing to the game.

The ******* *OILERS* unseated the Red Wings. If the Wings are supposedly in that 'perennial power' position, why are they always too old, too European, too whatever? Why haven't they won every Cup from 97 to now? The media is doing little more than wanting their cake and eating it too, and I'm so freaking sick of having it forced down my throat, particularly in the last few years when Crosby is forced down with it too. As far as the media is concerned the Penguins ARE that power, because I struggle hard to find any kind of discussion about the series that suggests that there's another team Pittsburgh is playing against.

Shame. I was on the verge of getting one of these but apparently even for the Stanley Cup Finals RBK still went with the godawful heat-printed single-piece leatherette for the SC patch. Plus it looks really weird having the logo crammed into the same space as the C/A patch - they should have put it on the shoulder instead.

They do for ice climbing walls. I've never seen it used for skating though.

You could always leave...

Uh, you asked the question, I answered it. I made the argument that squaring up an offensive line's ability directly against another offensive line makes less sense than squaring up a defensive paring against a forward line's offensive capabilities, and in that context I see no reason why Detroit dosen't have the tools on the blue line capable of shutting/slowing down Malkin's line.

I would say that the gap between Pittsburgh's offense and Detroit's defense is much smaller than that between Pittsburgh's defense and Detroit's offense. Lidstrom squaring up against Malkin seems a lot less lopsided than Datsyuk vs. Gill.

The Penguins as a whole have been terrible at faceoffs. Even if he gets on the ice on the fly, he can't do much if he dosen't have the puck to work with. Not easy to get it back from a team so good at puck-possession hockey.

Have the Penguins seen a defense with eight going on nine Norris trophies under its belt? A defense that has had the lowest shots allowed in the league and the lowest goals allowed in the league? A defense that has the help of a Selke winner plus two current nominees? A defense that has puck-possession hockey down to a science? A defense that transforms on paper a very good goaltender into a spectacular one? They haven't played the Wings this season, so I'm going to say no.

Uh, they have guys called 'defensemen' whose specific JOBS it is to shut down offense. Detroit's third line isn't going to slow down or stop Pittsburgh's top line, Lidstrom/Rafalski/Stuart/Kronwall/Chelios is. Having good defensive offensemen is just the cherry topping it all off.

I'd always feel more nervous about facing a team that fought tooth and nail to get itself into a playoff spot (Nashville) than a team that was good half a season ago only to enter a complete freefall to a low playoff seed (Ottawa). Plus, Central teams have always been a nagging issue for the Wings. As for Colorado being better than the Rangers? Er, simply put, they weren't. Colorado was our Senators as far as playoff round matchups were concerned.

Very much so. I often listen to sports radio when I'm at work. It's a station in Calgary (so ideally there's some degree of neutrality here) but they often import programs from ESPN and what have you. About a week ago these two guys brought up a words that 'real sportscasters' rarely use - hockey. After flat-out confessing that they never even cast a glance at the hockey season until the playoffs, the next half-hour was little more than a Crosby ****-fest perpetuated by a string of call-ins. FINALLY, the final caller came on and went "Hey geniuses, there are 19 other players on the Penguins squad, and 20 more on another team that made it as far as they did. Zetterberg and Datsyuk aren't exactly amateur players". The reply was basically a half-second recognition of the Wings before moving on to baseball. Completely different story when it turned to in-station programming later on in the day. The hosts finally, FINALLY expressed, through the media, what has been in my mind since this series was announced - Pittsburgh has the edge of offensive depth but the numbers are clearly showing that Crosby is the key to said depth. Shut him down and every other Penguin on the ice shuts down with him. At the same time, playing against a dud Senators squad and a Philly team with its best defensemen out is exaggerating their numbers on both ends of the ice. Detroit, meanwhile, has a star-studded defense that, get this, GOES BEYOND JUST THE BLUE LINE! EVERYone seems to completely forget that the Wings have some amazing defensive forwards to complement the likes of Lidstrom and Kronwall. The Wings are more than capable of frustrating the Penguins' offense, and that's what's going to cost them. Faceoff performance and puck-possession play wasn't mentioned, but I physically lifted my arms and mimed an empathetic 'THANK YOU! SOMEONE GETS IT!'

Any jersey store will number a blank uniform.

I was tempted to get one of these SCF-edition jerseys but it looks kinda awkward having the Finals patch and the C/A logos crammed together in the same space - they should have put it on the shoulder instead. Ah well, I really don't like the looks of EDGE jerseys anyway

I'm tempted to get Franzen on my blank red jersey since I have Lidstrom on my white one

I quite like the entry for Bettman too. I lolled hard at 'LOL, HOCKEY division'

Does anyone have stills from that one South Park episode where the Red Wings play against Stan's peewee team? All this talk about the Penguins' 'youth' being an advantage is giving me some ideas...

I'll give you the Avs, but it's well-known that the Wings' weak spot has been their own division. It's made more complicated by having Osgood swap with Hasek halfway through, but if you're going to ask me to compare matchups, Nashville stood a better chance of winning their series than Ottawa did theirs. Detroit had two opponents that actually showed up to give them a fight. Pittsburgh had zero.