Hockey in Florida? Really? :wink: Dave, I have a cousin (87 yrs old) who live in Clearwater. He is ecstatic about the Lightning Hockey Franchise!
Yeah the Stanley Cup has made new friends. Denver, Dallas, Anaheim, etc all have had Stanley Cups Champs...long ways from the Original 6.
This Lightning team has been fun to watch. Great young players and Yzerman has his stamp on the team for sure. Of course I spent many years up in Detroit watching him play. If Tampa wins the Cup they will have beaten 4 of the original 6 in the playoffs... Detroit, Montreal, NY Rangers, Chicago
I have tried hard to follow hockey but it is such a foreign game to this Florida boy. It was just not something that really had any airtime growing up in my area of the South except for the Olympics every four years. And when you have only seen snow once or twice in 50 years its hard to relate to guys chasing a puck on ice....
When I was a young boy way back in the 60s in Jacksonville I was taken quite a few times to see the Southern Hockey League Jacksonville Rockets take on the likes of the Greensboro Hornets, et. al. I learned then that you go to a fight to watch a hockey game break out.... :lol:
That's how I felt about the sport until I saw my first live NHL game. I could not believe the size of the players and the speed of the game. It was amazing. I still am not an avid fan, but I follow the game and enjoy watching.....even if I don't understand fully many of the aspects of play (penalties, puck movement, defense, etc.).
Sid on the Tampa Bay team they have 3 players 6' 7" 1 player 6; 5" 1 player 6' 5" On skates they're huge.
Wow! Gip, you're an experienced observer of the game. As big as they are, are they bullying the Blackhawks?
No but they cover a great deal of ice with their reach. The Wings took them to 7 and I expect that Chicago will win in 7.
Heckuva game last night. Now 2-2. Winning goal scored in front of my college roomie and his daughter (3rd row on goal line).
The Blackhawks win their 3rd Stanley Cup in 6 years. This is the first time since 1939 that they won at home. My college roomie was there to witness it. He's one happy dude.
Don't follow NHL at all, but the articles I've read give a lot of praise to the Blackhawks for the way they built the team and kept it essentially together in the era of salary caps, free agency, etc. I know Hockeytown gets thrown around a lot to whatever city wins the Cup..but wasn't Detroit the original "Hockey Town"?
The Red Wings have made the playoffs for 25 straight years. I don't think that another team is in double digits. They're still Hockeytown to me.
I'm not a knowledgeable hockey fan, but I recognize Detroit as hockey town. I'm guessing that even the most avid Blackhawks fans would agree.