Hockey Whooha

With

Wingnut

Of

Pepee's Pornn Palace

The Final Conquest

It was sure a hell of a Western Conference finals, the Wings and Avs put on a great display of Hockey. The series was played the way the game should be played, with great skating, passing and a graceful flow to the game. Hockey is an exciting game when it is played like that. I can't stand to see a game played where players are draped over each other like couples during Southern Decadence.

The Wings turned in two near perfect games an advanced to the Stanley Cup finals, which started last night. As I alluded to in last week's column the Carolina team starts the series with a great deal of confidence and that always-powerful "Cinderella story" momentum. If it were up to the media they would have just handed the cup to Detroit, something event the players who have never had a cup would have agreed with.

Carolina is playing for the Stanley Cup, not a team that played so poorly during the regular season they would not have made the playoffs if they were in a different division. They defeated some very good hockey clubs to make it this far into the playoffs. They have nothing to prove to anyone, as everyone expects them to loose, this alone can motivate the team to play the best hockey of their lives.

They did just that in game one. The interesting match up I mentioned last week with the ex-wing Aaron Ward fell right into place. Ward's botched defensive play lead to the first Detroit goal, and his fantastic open ice pass lead to Carolina's tying goal that lead to overtime. Carolina has owned overtime this year winning all of it's 7 games played to date, including last nights game. They made short work of the Wings in a little under a minute of overtime.

Carolina deserved the win in game one; they outplayed the Wings and seemed to have the "want" more then the Wings. The question now becomes will the Wings respond the way they have in the previous series when they seemed to play sloppy hockey like they did last night. The last time they played that badly they came out and won 8 straight games. Don't miss game two on Thursday it will determine how the series will go. If Carolina wins on Tuesday they will skate the cup in four games with a sweep of the Wings. If Detroit wins on Tuesday they will skate the cup in six games with a victory at home. There I made my prediction :^)

For all of hockey fans around the globe I hope the officials put those damn whistles back in their pockets. They were calling penalties last night like it was the first game of the season, where they call everything. I'm not going to even go into how they could call a 5 on 3 at this point in the playoffs, or which team got the advantage of the calls, just the fact the game was called like it was. It takes away from the flow of the game and get damn irritating as the night goes on.

Keep your stick on the ice and put the puck on the net.

Wingnut

WESTERN CONFERENCE As of 6-5-02
Rank	Team	Wins
1	DETROIT	0
3	CAROLINA	1