Putting My Football Jones On Ice » Brats & Beer

April 10, 2007
posted under: Hockey, NCAA Frozen Four, NHL

Sweet Geebus do I miss football. Can’t we get the season started a little early this year? I’m so incredibly bored I might have to start watching NFL Europa. (And when did it become NFL “Europa” anyway? They should call it NFL Germany & The Netherlands.)

I did have a nice respite from the long darkness of the off-season on Saturday, though, watching the NCAA Frozen Four hockey championship. It was a great, hard-hitting game between Michigan State and Boston College that went right down to the wire with the Spartans Justin Abdelkader scoring the game winner with just 18 seconds left. Not that I’m any fan of MSU, but I’d have to concur with the esteemed patrons at the Wisconsin Sports Bar that any day BC goes down to a Big Ten team is a good day.

Speaking of hockey, I am pretty excited about the NHL playoffs starting up this week. Finally some decent pro hockey on television. I swear you couldn’t design a worse system of regular season coverage than what we get from Versus and NBC. If they’re trying to build (rebuild?) a national following for this sport, they have to start showing better games during the regular season. But all we ever get is Dallas against Columbus or Los Angeles and St. Louis. Ack!

This year, like every other, I’m pulling for the Canadian teams to win because, well, it’s their Cup after all. However, I will probably be rooting for Pittsburgh against Ontario just because the Penguins have struggled for so long they deserve to go deep into the playoffs, and they just might with Crosby and Staal on the team. I’d like to see maybe the Pens and Vancouver paired in the Stanley Cup finals; that could be a great series.