Playoff Hockey Baby!

It is playoff hockey time! Woooooooooooo!!!!

The first week of playoff hockey is the best time of the year. At least two games a night and usually three games on the weekend. Awesome! I don’t plan to leave my TV this week.

The Philadelphia Flyers (my team) managed to draw the Pittsburgh Penguins so they are in for quite a difficult series.

click on the image to see a youtube video of Kate Smith singing God Bless America in the Spectrum

Between her live performances and the recordings the Flyers have used since she died, Kate Smith has a record of 76-20-4.

Now that we have heard Kate sing, I feel really good about the Flyers and their chances this year. As has been the case since Hextall left, the question will be goaltending. I actually thought Biron (the Flyers goaltender) had a great playoff series last year so hopefully he can play well again this year. Like the other 15 teams out there we are only 16 wins away from hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup.

For those of you who do not know much about hockey, the playoffs are 16 teams (8 from the western conference and 8 from the eastern conference) playing best of seven series to determine who will advance to the next round.

Here is this year's bracket...but not really. They reseed the teams after each round so the highest eastern team plays the lowest eastern team

In the end, only one team has the privilege of hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup high above their head.

The Stanley Cup is the greatest trophy in all of sports

I wont say that this is the most prestigious trophy or hardest to win trophy in the world, but I challenge you to find a trophy with more history, more tradition, and a more iconic image. One of my favorite traditions with the Cup is that hockey players will NOT touch the Cup until they have won it. That is how much they respect it. Some other fun facts about the Cup from GreatestHockeyLegends.com are:

• Teams drink champagne (as well as other choice beverages) out of the punch bowl top


• It is the only trophy in professional sports that has the name of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff engraved on it


• The cup has been lost a couple times
  
  
  
  • In 1907, the Montreal Wanderers left the Cup at the home of a photographer they hired to immortalize their victory. The photographer’s mother turned it into a flower pot for the next several months.
  
  
  • In 1905, drunken members of the Ottawa Silver Seven thought it would a good celebratory idea to punt the Cup into the Rideau Canal. No one rescued out of the chilly waters until the next day.
  
  
  • In 1924, Montreal Canadiens players were on their way to a victory party at owner Leo Dandurand’s house. The players had set the Cup on the sidewalk snowbank while they changed a flat tire. When arrived at Dandurand’s house, they realized they had left the Cup on the sidewalk. They hurriedly drove back, and were relieved to see the silver bowl sitting right where they left it, completely untouched.
  
  
  
  

• And stolen a couple times
  
  
  
  • In 1962 as the Montreal Canadiens were playing the defending champion Blackhawks in Chicago. The Hawks had the Cup, much to the dislike of 25 year old pianist Kenneth Kilander, a seriously devoted Habs fan who made the trip to the Windy City. During the game Kilander picked the lock and simply headed out the doors, bribing a security guard with $250 and reportedly telling him “I’m taking it back to Montreal where it belongs.”
  
  
  
  

As I have mentioned before one of my priorities every playoff (after the Flyers winning of course) is that the Cup be won by an American team. It pisses Canadians off to no end that they have not won a Cup since 92-93. It was a good regular season this year and only 3 Candian teams made the playoffs: the Vancover Canucks, the Calgary Flames, and the Montreal Candiens.