Any Habs song should evoke Charles Trenet and peniches on the St. Lawrence. More accordion, please.

Boum! could easily work for hockey.

I can't understand why they rushed the Flyers/Caps games 6 and 7 to be on back-to-back nights, just so the Flyers/Habs series could start two days later, just so the game competes with the Red Wings/Avs game, which means the Flyers game is not being televised. Crap.

Apologies for the rant.

Any chance that Channel 45 will show it locally just for something to air? They've randomly shown some Flyers games this year, I guess because it's Comcast in Philly and its Comcast here too.

It's not on their schedule. I just realized that the MLB Extra Innings Package has been put on the same channels as the NHL package. I wonder if that means that RCN cable has unwittingly given me access to the game.

It's possible; For a long time I was getting the MLB package despite only paying for the NHL package. I get neither now (I'm skint).

The Flyers may not win the Stanley Cup, but if there was a trophy given out to the team that blew the most 2-goal leads in the playoffs, they would surely win it in a landslide.

I got home later than usual (but it was for a sports-related reason, attending a panel discussion featuring Tommie Smith and John Carlos), so the Flyers were already ahead 2-0. Then look at what happened. Maybe I need to not actually watch the rest of the playoffs.

Coffy,

No lead is safe. It's always a problem with hockey, but especially this Flyers team in both the regular season and now in the playoffs. Makes it quite tense to watch.

Uh oh. Flyers have another 2 goal lead, with 6:00 minutes left in the 2nd. The Habs have them right where they want them. . .

No strictly the right thread for this news (it's a 2008/2009 season piece of info), but Steaua Bucharest have obviously decided that they can no longer compete in Romania without playing in Hungary too, and have entered next year's Hungarian league too (the invitation has been there for a while but they haven't taken it up before).

This is only ice hockey, which is not huge in either country, but it is a significant rapprochement moment I feel.

Does Becali own the ice hockey team as well? Or is it a separate institution? Even if they are distinct entities, it certainly is an "interesting" move in light of what's been going on in the football league this year.

To update the NHL results, the conference finals will be Pittsburgh-Philadelphia and Detroit-Dallas. The Penguins eliminated the Rangers in the first overtime period, while it took Dallas four overtimes to beat San Jose.

Liverpool supporters may wish to note that Tom Hicks' Dallas Stars are still alive, while George Gillett's Montreal Canadiens are playing golf.

No, Becali has nothing to do with the hockey team. I'm not entirely sure what (if any besides the name and presumably some historical connection) the connection between the two teams is.

Is the World Championship getting any coverage in North America? At all? It's mainly Shedden bashing here, which is tremendous fun.

It's getting a little coverage, but as far as I'm aware none of the games are on TV in the United States (unless its being shown on the NHL Network, which I don't get) and I think at least some of Canada's games are on TSN in Canada.

That's a pretty massive oversight. Everything's on here, and most of it is pretty dull (not that I've watched anywhere near all of it, like).

Not really. Even if it were on TV, I doubt it would get much attention.

Hockey doesn't get good ratings on TV in the US as it is, and right now hockey fans' attentions are focused on the Stanley Cup playoffs which are far, far, far more important to us than the putative World Championships, which has some good players, but the top six countries can't send their best teams because so many players are in the NHL playoffs.

And in Canada, the Memorial Cup is still going on, I believe, and a lot of people up there care more about that.