hockey

So there it is. Another year passes and once again, no Canadian-based NHL team enters the winner's circle.
This marks the first full decade (2000-09) since the NHL was formed in 1917 that a Canadian team won't have won the championship.

Character? The Pittsburgh Penguins insist their cup runneth over. Resiliency? That, too.
We're about to find out for sure.

Not that they ever thought it would be easy, but the Carolina Hurricanes shouldn't have been surprised by what happened Sunday night.
They were on the other end of it in their previous series, when the Hurricanes were the team facing elimination against an opponent with another chance to close them out.

As a small, tense drama played out in a Phoenix courtroom Thursday, a question leapt to mind.
Understanding the grave consequences, how could the NHL have allowed the Phoenix Coyotes to fall into bankruptcy?
Could it be that commissioner Gary Bettman badly overplayed his hand?

For the simple reason that Sidney Crosby is inspired out of his mind and playing the best hockey of his spectacular career, it's still easy to like the Pittsburgh Penguins' chances of climbing out of the 0-2 hole they find themselves in this morning against the Washington Capitals.

So the tape-to-tape pass wasn't extinct after all. It just seemed that way after the Carolina Hurricanes spent most of their time passing the puck to the Boston Bruins in the first game of this NHL playoff series.

In a second-round playoff series that has the Art Ross Trophy and Maurice Richard Trophy winners, two finalists for the Hart Trophy and a finalist for the Norris Trophy, one clash of two stars stands out.

There are comebacks, and there are miracles, and there are those that might just be both and defy description anyway.
There's no easy way to say how or why the Carolina Hurricanes won Tuesday. You can say only that they scored twice in the final 80 seconds to turn an impending Game 7 loss into a 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils and move on to the second round.

In this Carolina-New Jersey first-round NHL playoff series, there has been one goaltender at the center of just about everything.
From his complaints before the first game was ever played to his histrionics after Game 4 to his preposterously good performance in Game 5, the Devils' Martin Brodeur has gotten all the attention.

You have to feel for Philadelphia's kind, decent, mature hockey fans, don't you?
You know the ones I'm talking about. They don't seem to care all that much about the Flyers-Penguins games. They pay big money to get into the Wachovia Center for the sheer enjoyment of chanting "Crosby stinks!" or some such hospitable thing.