HOCKEY

I never watched a minute of NHL hockey all season. I watched a little bit of one game during the playoffs last week. HDTV makes it a lot better. Last night I watched the complete Stanley Cup Finals game. It was sooooo exciting.

This was the final game of the best of seven series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were meeting in Detroit and of course the home crowd was roaring. The first period went scoreless and after Max Talbot scored to put the Pens in front in the second, Pittsburgh captain and leading scorer Sidney Crosby took a hard check against the boards and had to leave the game. Talbot scored again in the second and they went into the third and final period with a 2-0 lead. Detroit scored with about six minutes to go and it was bedlam after that. Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury made some great saves and they held on against a frantic Detroit attack to secure the win.

Crosby is just 21 years old and the youngest captain ever to raise the Stanley Cup. He was the first player drafted four years ago when he was 17. He won the Art Ross Trophy as the league's high scorer when he was 19. He also won the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Lester B. Pearson Award as the MVP of the National Hockey League that year. He has been the team captain for two years. He is at the top of the mountain. It will be interesting to see what he does with the rest of his career and the rest of his life.
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