>Well, the Ducks host the Sens tonight....you can find it on the Witness Protection Channel (a.k.a. the Versus Network).
>
>Ducks in 6 or 7
>
>What a shame that the NHL is so much more fun to watch than it was the year before the rule changes....but the TV coverage here in the U.S. is still pitiful.


Are you having fun with us with that bit about the Versus Network? Have not even heard of that one. I know NHL viewer ratings do not warrant major network coverage, but still.

I liked hockey growing up, when it was more of a major sport. I grew up in New England when the Bobby Orr-Phil Esposito Bruins were winning Stanley Cups at the old Boston Gahden.

Like all the other kids in the neighborhood I played pond hockey in the winter and street hockey in the summer. Not because hockey was in our blood necessarily, or even as the primary sport, but because we were always out there playing something, whatever was appropriate for the season or circumstances. I'm not going to get up on a stump here but I really do think today's kids have lost something with the regimentation of kid's sports. It seemed to me we did just fine when it was unorganized, when there were not necessarily coaches or cheering sections, when no one was there to explain or enforce the rules. We managed somehow. It might even in fact have been good for us to learn sports that way. (Insert slightly sarcastic eyeroll). Of course there were organized sports as well, and most of us played those, too, but I'm not sure even the best coaches taught us more than we somehow taught each other in our collective "wisdom." Sort of the Wikipedia concept long before there was a Wikipedia.

Neither Ottowa nor Anaheim has won the Cup before, have they? For no concrete rational reason I am going to cheer for Ottowa, the team from the country that invented hockey, rather than the team named for a Disney movie.