YOU CAN PLAY: Congrats to Brooks Orpik and the whole You Can Play project for reaching out and fighting homophobia in sports. Nice to see that hockey players, off the ice at least, are more sophisticated as a whole. Even though Brooks is a little… robotic on camera, the message stands on its own. Never been a bigger Penguins fan than I am today… although it’s still not very much :).
Share this! Read more about it here.
I’m rooting for the Kings to win the Stanley Cup. I like the Kings, their *true* fans deserve it (even if they’re few and far between, and even if the Staples Center is a terrible place [I do love LA though]), and Gretzky came so close with them that I want them to win now. And screw Phoenix, and all the Eastern Conference teams. Who are you rooting for?
Red Wings 3OT games since 1990, #5/5. There was a time when the Wings swept the Ducks out of the playoffs pretty regularly, like this series in 1997. On May 4, Slava Kozlov put this one home and the Wings took a 2-0 lead in the Conference Semifinals. This series was closer than the sweep would indicate; game 1 also went to OT, and game 4 was won in double OT. The Red Wings went on to win their first Stanley Cup in 42 years.
So that’s all of them. Five since I started following hockey, and three were against the Ducks! Congrats to Marian Gaborik on finally producing last night.
Red Wings 3OT goals since 1990, #4. Finally one that we won! June 8, 2002. I have a distinct memory of this one: it was the end of my senior year of high school, and I was out that night getting back together with my ex-girlfriend (!), so I was taping the game (remember taping?). I get back home, and, against my better judgment, turn on the TV and start rewinding the tape…. but they were still playing. Of course at that point I just watched, and it was only about five minutes later or so that Igor Larionov put this one in. Five days later the Wings hoisted their 11th cup.
Red Wings 3OT games since 1990, #3. April 10, 2003. Game 1 of maybe the worst playoff series Detroit has played since I was born. This is the second goal into the video above, but it’s only four seconds or so in. Paul Kariya (who I always quite liked) puts this one in to set the tone for the sweep. Good for Mike Babcock though.
Red Wings 3OT games since 1990, #2. June 2, 2008. I think we all remember this one; Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. Not too depressing, since we would go on to win it in the next game, but this one was a real gut punch when it happened. Petr Sykora scored after Jiri Hudler took a 4-minute high sticking penalty.
Red Wings 3OT games since 1990. There are five of them, we’ll go in reverse order since they get better that way. Number one is above: Todd Marchant scored the winner to even the 2009 Conference Semifinals at 1-1 on May 3, 2009. I don’t really remember this one, but I do remember a then-relatively-unknown Darren Helm scoring a huge goal in the eventual game 7 win. This was a big series for me, as I lived in San Diego at the time and got to go to two playoff games: Game 4 (yay!) and Game 6 (boo!).
