Just follow the lead of Ryan Kraft, a Dayton-area Penguins fan who was out Joe Louis Arena on the night the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. As the team skated the Cup around the ice, he decided to get closer to the action to take a picture. Then he got closer. Clooooooser. Then he just walked right out on to the ice and joined the fray. No problem.

In the delirium of the moment, no one really seemed to notice or care that one of the team's "family members" was taking fanboy pictures with everyone he could, stealing champagne bottles, and kissing the Red Wings logo at center ice. And when the party headed back to locker room, he just waltzed right in with everyone else. More champagne, more autographs, got his picture taken with Mario Lemiuex and ... yep, that's him holding the Stanley Cup. Unbelievable.

It's both amazing (for this guy) and a little scary (for everyone else) that it's this easy to by pass the bouncers at a championship celebration. Why spend all that effort learning to play hockey at a world-class level when you can just wait for somebody else to win the Stanley Cup and then take it from them? It's so much easier that way.

Centerville grad crashed Penguins' Cup party [Dayton Daily News]

Congrats, naturally, to the Penguins who had a shaky season, struggled to get into the playoffs, but slowly pulled it all together and ended up the best team in the league. It only took one more miracle save from Marc-Andre Fleury as time expired—much like one Chris Osgood made last year—to put the Red Wings away. Detroit made an amazing final push, and sporting events don't get much more thrilling than those final 3 minutes, but Pittsburgh was the better team and they earned their title.

A couple of final thoughts:

• Sidney Crosby is now the youngest captain to win the Stanley Cup and few will remember he spent the second half of the game hunched over in pain on the bench. Or that he appeared to skip the handshake line? (Am I wrong, or were most of the Red Wings in the locker room while he was still hugging assistants? Update: I was not wrong.) Those who consider Crosby to be a spoiled, fortunate son probably won't change their mind after tonight, but that's their issue, I guess.

• Marian Hossa. Ouch.

• How many times can Gary Bettman walk on the ice—in any and every NHL city—to a chorus of merciless boos before he gets the hint? You're there to oversee the biggest moment of the year for your industry and the only thing everyone can agree on is that you are a villainous bum. What is he hanging on to?

• Seriously. Amazing finish. At least everyone still has the Pirates to beat up on.

Penguins hold off Red Wings to take third Stanley Cup [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

That was easy. Okay, back to the game. There isn't much to add other than to say that the bad news is that this monumental game is being played on a Friday night, but the good news is that NBA Finals are not also on at the same time. As hopeful as I've been about this season and these playoffs and what it could mean for a revival of hockey in this country, here's a painful reminder of how much further the NHL still has to go. Seattle's main NBC affiliate is not showing the game tonight so that they can bring you local news, followed by a rousing episode of Inside Edition. I mean, there's always another Game 7 right? (Sigh.)

Whatever your plans are tonight, I suggest they involve a restaurant/bar that has many large television screens in strategic locations. It's been a competitive, entertaining series (or not) and with any luck you'll get nice big sendoff to leave you wanting more in the fall. No predictions here; I just like to watch and you should too.

Stanley Cup Game 7 Bumped by KING-TV [Enjoy The Enjoyment]
The 10 people and things with the most pressure in Game 7 [Puck Daddy]
Win or lose, Hossa was still wrong [The Two-Line Pass]
Tonight, the Crap Fest Must End [Melt Your Face Off]
Ostertag digs hockey, longs for NBA [Arizona Republic]
BILL GUERIN VISITS THE ROWDY BBQ [Mondei's House]

Personally, I feel that if there is one way you don't want your testicle injury to be described, it's "nearly catastrophic." Lidstrom actually missed the final two games of the Chicago series after Patrick Sharp allegedly gave him the "how's your father" with his stick, but the true reason for his absence wasn't widely reported—officially he had a "lower body injury" a fact that Globe and Mail opinionist Bruce Dowbiggin laments in his latest column.

It's been pretty standard practice since forever for NHL teams to mask the true nature of their player's injuries during the playoffs. Ostensibly, it's to protect them from opponents who might take certain liberties with another player's weaknesses. (See Lidstrom get the business again on this replay from Game 6. It's a lot tougher to watch when you know about his previous "catastrophe.") But when fans watch certain players flail about the ice while helplessly asking, "What is wrong with that guy?", whose interests are really being served here? It's not like official injury reports keep anyone actually associated with the game—players, coaches, officials, reporters—from knowing what's really going on with the enemy. It's just that no one will talk about it publicly.

Toronto Star writer Damien Cox takes exception to Dowbiggin's assertion that he is in the tank for the NHL. He did report the true nature of Lidstrom injury. Sure, he did it after Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals well after anyone stopped caring, but it is in there. (In the 15th paragraph.) The truth is that Lidstrom is not the only player skating with mysterious injuries—Sergei Gonchar is another—that are obviously not common knowledge to the public and are never fully explained. It doesn't do the players any good to let fans think they are more able than they really are.

But media catfights between two Canadians are always fun.

NHL's injury policy a pain [The Globe and Mail]
Completed Homework [The Spin]
Kurtenthoughts: Jim Balsillie, Game 7, the Sedins, Nick Montana and More! [Kurtenblog]

Also, it isn't really for sale yet. The web pages—like the shirts and hats that are given to the winning team in every sport—were created ahead of time and someone just figured out the code in their system. All is well.

If you really want to solve a mystery, figure out how Rob Scuderi blocked three shots in the crease in the final seconds without committing a penalty. He's like the American Doug Henning or something.

Shop NHL already has Pens, Wings Cup champs gear on sale [Puck Daddy]

The NHL will not allow the Red Wings to broadcast tonight's road match on the video screens at Joe Louis Arena as they have done in past years, nor will they allow Penguins fans to watch on the jumbo screens outside Mellon Arena, as they have been doing for most of the sold-out home games. All fans must watch hockey programing from inside their house, sitting in front of a pre-approved television screen on standard, store-bought furniture. Also, beer consumption will be cut off after the first six-pack and you are limited to one bag of Cool Ranch Doritos per period. That is final.

Of all the dumb ideas the NHL has shot itself in the foot with, this one is pretty high on the list. (Right below the glow puck, but above Eric Lindros.) Yes, the 19,000 people that could potentially fill Joe Louis Arena equal one entire rating point in the Detroit market, but how many of them do you think will actually be from Nielsen households? (Newsflash: TV ratings are a statistical joke that have no bearing on reality.) Anyone watching at an arena or a bar will still get to see your ridiculous beer and truck ads ... and most importantly they will still be watching. Wouldn't it mean more to your sport to show a sold out arena of fans watching a game that isn't even taking place in their city then whatever sort of brownie points you earn with the networks and their advertisers? Dumb.

Oh, and I guess there's a hockey game tonight too. The home team has won the first five, so despite the 5-0 trouncing of the Penguins last weekend, it should be a good one.

NBC and NHL: Partners in idiocy [Pittsburgh Post Gazette]
No deal: Wings can't get TV rights for Joe Vision tonight [Detroit Free Press]

After Detroit dominated the first two games, the tables slowly turned in Games 3 and 4, and now I don't know what to think about either team. They could do another 180 back at Joe Louis Arena this weekend, or Henrik Zetterberg could lay down at center ice and take a nap. By the middle of the second period last night the Penguins were two steps faster the Wings, scoring three goals in six minutes, mostly because the Wings couldn't get back on defense. Pittsburgh looked like a well-oiled machine and Detroit looked like a creaky, busted one, but they still have home-ice advantage, so maybe we'll get another seven-gamer out of this and NBC won't have to feel ashamed of itself.

Oh, and the two-headed Malkin/Crosby monster has finally awoken from its brief slumber so there's that too. How can both teams be so good, yet seem so unevenly matched ... and somehow we still can't tell which one has the advantage. Go the distance, as the voice says.

Penguins rally to tie Stanley Cup series with Detroit, 2-2 [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
After 2 home wins, Detroit allows eight goals on road [Detroit Free Press]
Crosby & Co. make this series no laughing matter [Albom]

Despite its many issues, I think the NHL has made a lot of strides this year in the public's mind and has certainly come a long way from the dead and buried league of the lockout year. Meanwhile, the NBA seems to be having a crisis of confidence thanks to their officials, their money issues, their age limit, their draft lottery, their logo ... It's a running joke that the league only has one fan and he just wrote a 700-page book that will only be read on the toilet. But someone has to be sitting on that can. It won't soothe any minds to know that LeBron isn't around this week, but we'll always have Vitamin Water.

Both leagues need something big to happen in their championship series—so who are the ad wizards that decided to put both games on at the same time, leaving us nothing to watch on Wednesday or Friday? Super job, guys. Doesn't anyone in the league offices know how to work the E-mail?

Anyway, since we're all in a bind here, I'm genuinely curious what you would choose. And you can't say "Tivo" or "the clicker" or "I don't get Versus," because that's completely beside the point. If you could only watch one game tonight, what would it be? I know that both leagues have fans, but where are they and how many? This hastily thrown together, non-scientific web poll should settle the matter quite nicely.

Datsyuk hopes happy feet mean he's playing tonight [Toronto Star]
Magic, Lakers kick off NBA Finals at Staples Center [Seattle PI]

As opposed to those non-series series you're always reading about. Personally, I think it was Pittsburgh's innovative "six men on the ice" strategy that turned the tide. The Penguins many not have scored a goal during the 30 seconds or so that their extra attacker skated penalty-free, but it's that kind of outside-the-box thinking that turns also-rans into champions.

And you know what turns champions into also-rans? Horrific penalty killing, which is exactly what the Red Wings have. They're killing at atrocious rate of 71% in the playoffs (the Thrashers were worst in the NHL this regular season and they were at 74%), but everything will be fine provided they don't commit any penalties ever again.

So now we have Game 4 on Thursday—opposite the NBA Finals; kudos once again to the schedulers—where Pittsburgh will either complete their comeback or sink back into oblivion, meaning it really was one of those fake series and not the actual kind we wanted.

Talbot scores twice, Malkin bags three assists, Gonchar gets winner [Post-Gazette]
Game 3 Highlights [NHL.tv]
Crosby puts intangibles on full display [NHL.com]
No love lost for ex-Pen Marian Hossa in Steel City [Free Press]

We're not saying the Penguins are in trouble. After losing the first two in Detroit last season they did push the Stanley Cup Finals to six games. But teams currently in Pittsburgh's situation—down 0-2 heading home for Game 3—are 1-for-32 in the Finals. So yeah, they're in trouble.

It doesn't help that Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby have been stonewalled so far. One goal and one assist between them, and the goal was actually poked in by a Detroit defenseman. Chris Osgood has been phenomenal and Detroit's veterans have barely had to lift a finger. (Justin Abdelkader!) The one bit of good news for Pittsburgh is that the NHL's enforcement division can't even follow its own rules and will not suspend Malkin for his stick-swinging, jersey-ripping fight in the closing seconds last night. Instigators always get suspended, except when they don't!

But there's more bad news: No one is watching. NBC's ratings for Game 1 were down from NBC's first game last year, which was actually Game 3, which might be part of the problem but that's another story. This is a point that the NHL would prefer not to crow about, which is probably why the story was scrubbed from their website. If the series ends with a whimper on Versus this week, the league will have a lot more to think about this offseason.

Oh, and here's something for you to think about. Two Mitch Albom columns! It's a GM Bankruptcy Day miracle!

Penguins lose again in Detroit to fall behind, 2-0, in final [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
No suspension for Malkin; Inside Detroit's 2-0 lead on Penguins [Puck Daddy]
The NHL Does Not Care for Bad TV Ratings News [Orland Kurtenblog]
Bettman: State of the game positive, upbeat [NHL.com]
With a pair of 3-1 thrillers, Wings halfway to 12th Cup [Mitch Albom]
Wings have had luck on their side in Games 1 and 2 [More Mitch Albom!]

Hossa got his wish, riding the Red Wing bandwagon back to the championships round, but now he has to beat his old team if he wants to claim that Cup. I wonder if anyone has reminded him that if he'd stayed with the Penguins, he'd be in the exact same position—or arguably a much improved one the way Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are playing. Oh, and he would be much, much richer. If Hossa wins the title with Detroit, he will look like someone who made a shrewd, calculated (possibly cynical) risk and saw it pay off. If Pittsburgh wins, he will look like a colossal chump who jumped ship at the first sign of trouble and got a much deserved comeuppance.

In that eventuality, people will probably even joke that Hossa was the dead weight that dragged down both losing teams, which isn't true—he lead the Penguins in playoff goals last year—but will still sting like a mighty bumblebee.

"He came here, we took him in, fell in love with him, made songs for him, cheered for him," said Pens fan John McClelland, of Squirrel Hill. "Said he wanted a big deal. We offered it to him, then he goes to them for a one-year deal...."

"He abandoned us after the season was over, and I think a lot of people are still angry about that," said Pens fan Kim Piganell, of Oakdale.

Seriously, no pressure though.

Hossa Hatred: Pittsburgh Fans Still Angry At Ex-Penguin Star WTAE Pittsburgh]
Marian Hossa and the Stanley Cup finals of reckoning [Puck Daddy]

Then he got tossed. Security guards threw him out.

"You're outta here," Smith said they told him. "Come back in and you get arrested."

But Smith and his two friends from metro Detroit, who asked not to be identified, had a plan.

They had bought an extra ticket in anticipation of his booting. That's an extra $300 from a scalper.

And Smith was wearing a regular T-shirt, instead of Red Wings gear, when he threw the octopus.

Outside, he quickly threw on a Red Wings sweater and walked back into Gate 3.

"I feel great," Smith said as he roamed around the arena. "I'm not nervous. Anything with an adrenaline rush, I love it."

Yeah! Paying a high premium to a scalper! EXTREME!

You gotta love how chickenshit his friends are not to get identified in the article. "Oh d-d-d-dear. We helped smuggle a fan back into an arena in a city we don't live in. If this gets out, we'll never be able to run for president!"

Here are the lyrics (BECAUSE YOU KNOW THEY DOPE!):

now i'm not tryna be rude,
but hey Zetterberg I'm feelin you,
the way you're doin what u do,
reminds me of Adrian Peterson,
Thats why i'm makin these songs,
tryna let you know my love is strong,
you must be a hockey player,
the way you're playin hockey

snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe snipe

Holy hell, I was already rooting for the Penguins. Now I'm... still rooting for the Penguins, but I'll be forced to do so with this stuck in my head. At least I shall not suffer in solitude. Sorry folks. Weekend daddy projects his anger.

Because this is probably one of the last NHL posts we'll be doing for a while — everyone seems to think this series is done tomorrow night — we thought we'd check in on what the top NHL bloggers are saying. Bear with us, non-hockey fans: It's almost over.

• James Mirtle: "As for the Senators: If you can't win at home against a team missing its top defenceman, you don't deserve to win the Stanley Cup."

• Behind The Jersey: "The thought of Chris Pronger raising the Stanley Cup over his head makes me want to throw up. What is the verb for vomit in German? I just happened to learn it this week. It's "übergeben." I knew my German class would come in handy someday."

• On Frozen Blog: "Truth be told, I'm not an Alanis Morisette fan. Just not my thing, nothing personal. However, she and her 20,500 background singers taught me a lesson in how one is supposed to sing their national anthem tonight. I've never been at a sporting event (or any other event for that matter) where a crowd sang so enthusiastically and without self-consciousness the anthem of their country. Maybe I haven't been to the right games. Maybe our anthem is too tough. Maybe I've just been oblivious (which happens with an uncomfortable regularity), but it occurs to me that how it was done tonight is the way it should be done."

Oh, and Japers' Rink actually watched the game from the Canadian embassy. That's awesome.

Much has been made in recent years about sports leagues struggling with the decision of whether or not to give press passes to bloggers. (Our views on this are made clear right here.) But last week, the NHL actually received a request for press passes for the Stanley Cup Finals from a group even less popular than bloggers: Al-Jazeera! And the NHL said no way. SI's Michael Farber explains.

Al-Jazeera has no one at the Stanley Cup finals, its credential request having been turned down. Given the paucity of non-aligned (i.e. Southern California) newspapers from the States covering the final between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators, you might have thought the NHL would have been happy to reach a, hmmm, really non-traditional hockey market, but, alas, that didn't happen. Why Al-Jazeera saw the news value in something that, say, the Detroit News apparently hasn't is for deeper thinkers than me.

We're not sure what the NHL's problem is with Al-Jazeera — which, we remind you, is an actual news station with real stories and real reporters — but we understand the desire of the station to cover the games: They don't get Versus there either, after all.

Al-Jazeera Shut Out Of Cup Finals [SI.com]

(And yes, we know the Finals are on NBC. Play along.)

As has been established repeatedly, we're idiots about hockey, so we brought in the big guns to preview this one: Eric McErlain, purveyor of all that is good and righteous at Off Wing Opinion. (He's also a columnist for NBC Sports and lead blogger for AOL Fanhouse NHL.) The guy's a legend in this sports blogging world, and nobody knows his hockey better than he does.

Sure, the finals of a major sports league are going to be on Versus, but that's no reason not to care, right? After the jump, Eric lets you know what you gotta know. And we'll see you all tomorrow.

——————-

Is there any sports league in recent memory that has gone into its championship round with more negative mojo than the NHL? Just when the righteous anger over NBC's dumping of Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals to Versus was beginning to subside, Gary Bettman and company found another rake to step on as the closely guarded news of the sale of the Nashville Predators broke smack dab in the middle of a lengthy six day layoff before the start of the Stanley Cup Finals.

With nothing else to cover, and with the opening game of the Finals being played in Anaheim at end of a long holiday weekend in the U.S., talk inevitably turned to the disastrous tenure of NHL "Commissioner for Life" Gary Bettman and the abject failure of his strategy to create a national television footprint by expanding the league to the American Southeast and West.

What all of this rage is obscuring — and let's be honest, rage is the only emotion that any fans feel about no matter the reason or the season when the subject is Commissioner Bettman — is that we're on the cusp of what promises to be a pretty compelling matchup on the ice, ironically, one that's between two teams that were part of the post-1990 expansion era and only recently were rescued from the scrap heap.

To say that the Ottawa Senators have had an interesting history leading up to their first appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals would be an understatement. Perhaps the most frustrating season in their history had to be 2002-03, where the Senators posted 113 points in the regular season to win the President's Trophy only a few months after then-owner Rod Bryden took the team into bankruptcy. On-ice failure matched off-ice embarrassment in the Eastern Conference Finals when the Sens were dispatched by the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Devils in seven games.

But the Senators team that went into bankruptcy with Rod Bryden came out of it with pharmaceutical magnate Eugene Melnyk. The new stability in ownership mirrored the steady performance in the regular season, as the Sens remained at the top of the regular season standings even as playoff success continued to elude them.

Ironically, one of Bryden's last decisions as owner the season when he had the team declare bankruptcy was to bring old NHL hand John Muckler in to run the club as General Manager. After the lockout, Muckler rolled the dice and sent the popular Marian Hossa to Atlanta along with Greg DeVries for a man looking for another chance in another city: Winger Dany Heatley. Safe to say, it's not a deal most general managers would have made, but Heatley has made the most of his second chance in the NHL, far from the scene of a car accident he was responsible for in Atlanta that killed teammate Dan Snyder.

Heatley has posted back-to-back 50 goal seasons in Ottawa, as part of what's become one of the best lines in all of hockey along with Daniel Alfredsson and Jason Spezza.

But perhaps the best decisions Muckler ever made involved the players that he let get away. First, it was less than a year ago that Zdeno Chara, who Ottawa had acquired from the New York Islanders in what is now widely seen as a highway robbery deal, played out his contract with the Senators to test the free agent market. Figuring that retaining Chara would mean breaking up the rest of his team, Muckler let him walk and sign a five-year $37.5 million deal with Boston.

Rather than try to replace Chara outright, Muckler did a pair of deals that more than compensated for the 6'9" Chara's absence, signing free agent Joe Corvo from the LA Kings and acquiring Tom Preissing in a three-way deal with the Sharks and the Blackhawks. The result: Ottawa hardly missed the Slovak giant, as Ottawa continued to boast the deepest, and best balanced defensive corps in the NHL.

Next, Muckler said goodbye to the oft-injured Dominik Hasek, opting instead to sign Martin Gerber from the Carolina Hurricanes. Though Gerber would eventually make his mark in Ottawa holding down a spot on the end of the bench for the emerging Ray Emery, it seems as if the Swiss goalie has a magic all his own.

But before this season's version of the Senators gelled into an unstoppable postseason force, they and head coach Bryan Murray — best known for underachieving everywhere else he's been behind the bench — struggled through the first half of the season, barely making it to .500 by January 1. But after that, there was no team in hockey that could touch them, as they posted a 27-7-8 record the rest of the way. Perhaps the most memorable of those games came on February 22 and 24, when the Sens traded 6-5 decisions with the Buffalo Sabres amidst a blizzard of fisticuffs triggered in the first game when Chris Neil took out Buffalo co-captain Chris Drury with a vicious, but legal hit.

Click here for the February 24 followup bout. After those two games, it should have been clear to everyone that these weren't your Daigle/Yashin version of the Senators, something that Pittsburgh, New Jersey and Buffalo discovered to their chagrin in the playoffs.

As for the Anaheim Ducks, the original Mickey Mouse franchise, this marks their second trip to the Finals overall and second in the last four seasons. With a Disney pedigree, most hardcore NHL fans hated the Ducks through most of their early history. After all, what self-respecting hockey fan would catch themselves pulling for a team named after a series of hockey flicks aimed at the under 12 set? The ire only increased when, in an early demonstration of corporate synergy, the Ducks seemed to become the official home team of ESPN 2. Later demonstrations of this strategy manifested themselves in five-minute SportsCenter features on Mark Schlereth's career as a soap opera actor as well as "ESPN Hollywood." Don't say you weren't warned.

But even Disney's deep pockets had their limits, as the company dumped the Ducks just one season after their first trip to the Finals when they sold the team to local Anaheim businessman Henry Samueli for just $50 million, a $25 million loss from the expansion fee that Disney paid when they were granted the franchise in 1993.

Though the Ducks, like so many other recent failed Stanley Cup Finalists, failed to even make the playoffs the following season, Samueli quickly got to work putting the franchise on sounder footing. Only three days after his purchase of the team was approved by the league's Board of Governors, Samueil hired ex-Vancouver Canucks GM Brian Burke as the Ducks GM.

Since taking over, it's clear that Burke has put his stamp on this Ducks team, one that played tougher than any other in the NHL, leading the league in fighting majors in both the regular season and the playoffs. Even better, with most of the hockey press calling for a crackdown on fighting, Burke was the one General Manager to propose modifying the instigator rule.

Burke, more so than any player on the Ducks, is this team's outsized personality. A master at playing the media, Burke's masterpiece might have been his trade deadline blog over at USA Today that managed to tick off just about anybody who was mentioned in it, while Burke stood pat at the deadline refusing to part with any prospects for any of the playoff rentals flooding the market.

But Burke's personality shouldn't obscure his hockey smarts, and in particular three deals that put the Ducks in the position they're in today. First, he re-imported one-time Duck Teemu Selanne back into the fold, with the Finn responding in much the same manner as Heatley in Ottawa, scoring 98 goals in the last two seasons after he looked finished following a stint in Colorado before the lockout.

Burke did one better when he shipped sure-fire Hall of Famer Sergei Federov to Columbus in exchange for Tyler Wright (who?) and Francois Beauchemin. In doing so, not only did Burke get the aging Federov's contract off the books in Anaheim, he also acquired Beauchemin, who has turned into a rock on defense and is regularly clocking better than 30 minutes of ice time per night in the playoffs. Even better, losing Federov meant that Colgate's Andy McDonald finally got the ice time he needed to mature into a front-line center, a chance he's made the most of, along with Anaheim forwards Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf and reclamation project Chris Kunitz (out for remainder of the playoffs).

But the deal that will go down in hockey history that put Anaheim back in the Finals wasn't triggered by Burke at all, but rather by unspecified personal family reasons cited by Chris Pronger, as he pushed the Oilers to move him just hours after the Oilers lost Game Seven of the 2006 Finals to Carolina. In the end it was Burke who won the auction, sending Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, a first rounder in 2007, a second round pick in 2008 and a conditional first rounder in 2008 for the former league MVP and Norris Trophy winner — a deal that they'll be hating in Edmonton for a long time coming.

The results were pretty easy to see, with the Ducks starting hot, playing through a lengthy injury to Pronger and finishing things out well enough to secure the second seed in the playoffs, where they finished off three of the best goalies in the league in Niklas Backstrom, Roberto Luongo and Hasek.

So what to expect next? For those looking for a rundown on Ottawa, click here; for the download on the Ducks, click here.

While the Senators have held a physical edge in every series thus far in the playoffs, they're going to meet their match in an Anaheim team that's gotten used to running their opponents off the ice. In that light, I can't help but to expect this series to become a game of attrition, with Ottawa's depth both up front and on the blue line to exact a toll on a Ducks team that may rely too much on Pronger, Scott Niedermayer and Beauchemin — a trio that regularly puts in 30 plus minutes a night during the playoffs.

The next critical matchup has to be Ottawa's top line of Heatley, Alfredsson and Spezza against Anaheim's checking line of Travis Moen, Rob Niedermayer (too many Niedermayers!) and Sami Pahlsson. Simply put, we're looking at the best scoring line in the league against the best checking line in the league. Given that Ottawa's trio have been just about the surest bet in the postseason, my best guess is that things aren't going to change now. But if they fail, I'm not sold on the ability of Ottawa's other three lines to pick up the slack.

Weighing most heavily on my mind when it comes to the Ducks were the significant periods during the Western Conference Finals when they were simply outplayed by the Detroit Red Wings, most recently in Game Six where the Red Wings very nearly made up a three goal deficit in the third period. The difference in those moments was always J.S. Giguere, who we can count on to steal at least one game in the Finals. Unfortunately for Ottawa, I'm not sure the same sort of performance is in the cards for Ray Emery, a goalie who has simply done everything Ottawa has asked of him up to this point. However, as my NHL Fanhouse colleague Tom Luongo has pointed out, that's mainly due to the fact that Ottawa has kept the game simple for Emery, and not allowing their opponents to take advantage of Emery's greatest weakness, his lateral movement.

So while I've already gone on the record at Off Wing picking Anaheim to win it all, all the indicators, save one, are pointing in Ottawa's favor. Then again, some believe that the Ducks are the first real test that the Senators have faced in this playoff, and I'm inclined to agree given the massive gap between the conferences that was revealed during the regular season.

My best instincts tell me Ducks in seven, but only because Giguere steps up and saves Anaheim's bacon.

So maybe, just for a day or two, we can put away all the talk about the Quite Frankly-esque television ratings, the small market teams, the fact that very few people care... and just appreciate the beauty, goodness, and purity of a Game Seven. Seven's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. Seven dwarves. Seven, man, that's the number. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.

Erik Cole returned to the Carolina line-up last night, despite not having played since he suffered a broken vertebrae in his neck back in March. I bet 'Canes coach Peter Laviolette was expecting it to be an emotional lift for his team. Instead, everyone seemed to be preoccupied with thoughts of, "Geez, I hope Cole doesn't die tonight." Shots were 34-16 Edmonton.

Game Seven is back in Carolina on Monday night. 8:00. On NBC.

And here's how Rod Brind'Amour's pre-game pep-talk is likely to sound. From my-nhl.com, where there are seven more of these brilliant little bits.

It Will Be Seven [HockeyBird.com]
2006 Stanley Cup Final, Game 6 [james mirtle]

• Puck Update postulates that one reason the Oilers are trailing is that they overpractice behind-the-back passes. We have to admit that we never would have thought of that in a million years; and are even somewhat surprised that such a manuever is possible. Puck Update also gives us this amusing public service announcement, which we think somehow might be relevant to hockey.

• Off Wing Opinion reminds us that, despite the latest round of testing indicating that the NHL is totally clean on the banned substances front, there are those who aren't buying the results. One is World Anti-Doping Agency head Dick Pound.

• It has been mentioned in several blogs, but cannot be stressed enough in our opinion: One of the Stanley Cup Finals refs is named Mr. Magoo. It's actually spelled McGeough, but pronounced the same as the nearly-sightless cartoon character. Come on, Oilers fans! Your're down 3-1, and one of the officials is named Mr. Magoo! If you can't work with that, there's no hope for you.

• Have we mentioned that GoonBlog has one of our favorite logos of all time? No? Well, remind us to do that sometime.

• Hey, the NHL draft is only 10 days from now, as the folks at The Ice Block kindly remind us. They have a pretty good rundown of draft articles over there, so you hosers should probably check it out. We probably don't have to point out that the St. Louis Blues have the No. 1 pick.

• So, Game 5, Edmonton at Carolina, NBC, 8 p.m. eastern, tonight. It's impossible not to like hockey right now (unless you play for the Danbury Thrashers, that is). Anyway, there'll be more scoring than France-Switzerland, we're pretty sure.