There’s been some amazing hockey watching on TV the past few days.
The drive to the Stanley Cup started up last week with a number of my favorite teams in the race. Detroit clinched their playoff spot first in the NHL and so far they are 2 games up (and the only contest I really care about in the Western conference). Over in the Eastern Conference, Pittsburgh is two games up against Ottawa and Montreal is leading its series 2-1 over Boston. Even the Rangers are leading 2-1 over New Jersey right now. The Cup playoffs run until sometime in late May/early June… so lots of good hockey left here.
Over the weekend the NCAA Frozen Four played in Denver. This was some amazing hockey. In a lot of ways, watching college hockey is a lot more interesting than the NHL. There’s something a lot more intense about college hockey from the speed the move to how hard the hits are. Thursday night I watched Michigan and Norte Dame in a nail biting game that came down to overtime. The 5-4 game ended up with Norte Dame on top (sadly). Saturday night the finals brought Notre Dame and Boston College together for another smashing contest where Boston came out on top… which was just fine for me since Norte Dame needed to be crushed for sending Michigan home.
I was glad to discover ESPN U on the cable lineup. Finding that should mean I get more NCAA hockey this coming fall, which will be an awesome thing to have… been too long since I’ve had an outlet to watch that consistently.