Penguins-Predators Stanley Cup Final Preview

If you are a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Nashville Predators, (or Anaheim Ducks or Ottawa Senators; sorry), or professional hockey, you know that the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals begin on Monday. The Pittsburgh Penguins are trying to be the first team to earn back-to-back titles since 1997-1998. Meanwhile, this is the Nashville Predators first trip to the finals in franchise history.

I should probably mention that if you're looking for a thorough preview breaking down puck possession, goalie tendencies, and basically, anything hockey related, you should probably go somewhere else. Think of this as the preview that you didn't know that you needed.

James Neal (now of Nashville) and Patric Hornqvist (now of Pittsburgh) were once traded for each other. Really. This is going to blow your mind. Neal played for the Penguins from 2011-2014 including during the 2011-2012 season where he scored 40 goals and had 81 points. Hornqvist started his career in Nashville and played for the Predators for six seasons. You may hear about this trade once or twice during the finals.

The National Anthem debate. Jeff Jimerson will sing the national anthem for every Penguins home game, but the big question is who will perform the anthem in Nashville. The "regular" anthem singer, Dennis K. Morgan, has been replaced during this playoff run by Nashville residents Kelly Clarkson, Trisha Yearwood, the "captain's wife," better known as Carrie Underwood, and others. Morgan is not happy about this. Anyway, it will be interesting to see who will perform during the Stanley Cup Finals. Underwood? Garth Brooks? A Johnny Cash hologram?

Nashville is a hockey town (now). This is something else you may hear once or 7,000 times! I went to a Nashville and a Preds game in December (I really may write a blog post about it some day) and had an awesome time. The crowd was totally into the game, and it was an amazing atmosphere. If I wasn't a Penguins fan, I would definitely be rooting for Nashville.

Nashville and Pittsburgh have a rich playoff history against each other. And by rich, I mean one game where the Steelers lost to the Titans on January 11, 2003. Stupid Joe Nedney. (The Predators should have Nedney appear at every home game, though this would really only troll Pittsburgh sports fans since no players on the Pens or Preds would care about this.)

Olli Maatta of the Pens is from Finland and played on his country's Olympic hockey team. Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne is also from Finland and played on the Olympic hockey team. The finals should be a ratings bonanza in Finland!

At the beginning of the 2008 NFL season, the Titans defeated the Steelers and Tennessee linebacker Keith Bulluck stomped on the Terrible Towel. Naturally, karma kicked in and the Titans lost in the playoffs and the Steelers ended up winning the Super Bowl. Therefore, let's hope that Mike Fisher, Carrie Underwood's husband, does something as disrespectful (like maybe punching Marc-Andre Fleury?) to give the Penguins a little more motivation and championship.

Nashville has P.K. Subban and P.A. Parenteau. According to unnamed sources, the team is also big fans of P.B. & J sandwiches.

The University of Pittsburgh's men's basketball coach is Kevin Stallings. Before taking the job in Pittsburgh last year, he coached at Vanderbilt University for more than 15 years. The Stanley Cup Finals is essentially the Stallings Bowl! The losing team should be forced to keep Stallings.

Nashville coach Peter Laviolette and Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan were both born in Massachusetts making this the first NHL final featuring two American-born coaches. USA! USA!

Finally, the Washington Capitals traded Filip Forsberg to Nashville for Martin Erat. That was a really good trade for the Preds and a really bad trade for the Caps.

Let's Go Pens!

Everybody Loves Ottawa

I started a trend. It happens quite often but I didn’t expect this trend to occur north of the border. As part of last month’s hockey road trip, we visited Ottawa to see the Senators-Canadiens game and also toured the Parliament building. Nearly one month later, it appears that Ottawa is the place to be. Last week, Barack Obama made his first international trip as President to visit Canada’s capital and meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Here’s a picture if you don’t believe me:



Now two international superstars (me and President Obama, of course) visiting Ottawa does not make a trend. That’s where the Ottawa Senators come in. I already shared the eight-second video of Carrie Underwood attending a Sens game to watch her boyfriend Mike Fisher. Then last Friday, Ottawa acquired Mike Comrie in a trade with the New York Islanders. You may know Mike Comrie as the boyfriend of one Hilary Duff.



It seems to me that Ottawa is now THE place to be seen. Now we’ll just have to see if Duff, Underwood or Obama take a picture with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Safety Bear.



It’s tough being a trend-setter sometimes!


Voting in the Elite Eight round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament continues through 8:00pm tonight in the post below.

Mailing It In

If all goes well, the first round of the Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament will start on Thursday. While I hope to post the bracket later today, at this time, I am proud to unveil the logo.



A HUGE thank you to Cotter of One For the Other Thumb for creating this fantastic logo! If there is a 2nd annual tournament next year, the curling piece will be perfect for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Since I have spent all of my non-work time on the tournament, I don’t have much to share today except for these links:

The Post-Gazette writes about my favorite Pittsburgh restaurant, the O.

The Ithaca College gymnastics team is ranked #1 in Division 3. Meanwhile the men’s basketball team is 22-1, ranked ninth in the country and are poised to make the NCAA D3 Tournament. Go Bombers!

Now you see Carrie Underwood; now you don't (Puck Daddy)



Finally, I hope to have an Oscars poll for this Sunday's Academy Awards. Yahoo used to have a fantasy Oscar poll a few years ago, but it doesn't look like they run one anymore. If you know of websites that have this, please let me know. Otherwise, I may just run my own here.

Motown Philly Back Again

As part of my 2006-2007 sports adventure, I traveled to Philadelphia on Saturday for the Flyers-Islanders hockey game. Here are some notes from the trip:

* Even though I listened to CDs on most of my drive to and from Philly, I heard Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” three times on various radio stations. Can you say monster crossover hit?

* Of course, I also heard Toto’s “Hold the Line” (love isn’t always on time) twice, so maybe they are making a comeback.

* Philadelphia fans have a reputation as being some of the roughest and toughest in sports. From my sampling of one hockey game in Philadelphia, I was disappointed. There were a lot of fans dressed as empty seats. To be fair, the Flyers are terrible this year, plus it was an early game. I will give credit to the fans who booed the team with about 2 minutes remaining as the Flyers could not get the puck out of their zone.

* The song that played when Flyers came out for their warm-up: Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend.” This seems like an extremely random song. Actually, since many of the players are Canadian (like Loverboy) maybe this gets them pumped up.

* I had a cheese steak, and it was good.

* The Flyers showed a feature on the scoreboard of Simon Gagne and his Lamborghini. It seems to me that a Lamborghini would be a useless car to drive around Philadelphia. There are a lot of narrow streets and he could never go that fast driving on I-95 at 4:30pm on a Thursday evening. Does Gagne take the Lamborghini to the grocery store?

Next on the sports trip:

Tuesday: Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Washington Capitals at the Verizon/MCI/Phone Booth

Wednesday: Boston Celtics vs. Orlando Magic at the “new” Garden.

In case you were wondering, the Islanders won 4-3.