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Winter Classic Blackhawks vs. Red Wings at Wrigley Field


sterling

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I'll be stunned if next year isn;t in New York, with the Rangers probably playing either O6 rival Boston or NY rival the Islanders. They say Los Angeles badly wants it, but I think that takes away from the whole cold concept.

Brilliant commercial with the little kid (supposed to be Sidney Crosby) watching Mario Lemieux play and wearing his jersey, then showing Crosby grown up and having another kid wearing his. Outstanding!

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I'll be stunned if next year isn;t in New York, with the Rangers probably playing either O6 rival Boston or NY rival the Islanders. They say Los Angeles badly wants it, but I think that takes away from the whole cold concept.

Brilliant commercial with the little kid (supposed to be Sidney Crosby) watching Mario Lemieux play and wearing his jersey, then showing Crosby grown up and having another kid wearing his. Outstanding!

Apparently Boston vs the Rangers at Fenway next year.

Re the commercial, it's been running in Canada since the beginning of the hockey season. I guess it's finally getting airplay in the U.S.

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Fenway makes alot of sense.

Hey Marv, was just chatting with one of my buddies in Canada and he told me that the coverage was far superior to the NBC feed, especially the second intermission when there was supposed to be a touching and funny interview with Hull and Mikita. My question is, where was Gordie Howe in all this? Any idea? I thought it would have been an awesome publicty shot for the league to have had Hull and Howe drop the first puck. (How about Hull sticking his leg in front of Lidstrom for the draw? LOL The guy has charisma, man!)

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Hey Pat I didn't watch the NBC feed, so I'm not sure what they were showing or what kind of coverage they gave. I do know that CBC goes all-out for these kind of events, even though they don't have to: it always results in huge ratings in Canada.

The Hull-Mikita bit was nice. Stan was complaining about the cold, asking why the interview couldn't be done indoors! Bobby was Bobby - you couldn't get him to shut up!

I don't know what happened to Gordie. All the promos I heard / saw prior to the game indicated that he was going to be present. Maybe something happened and that's why Lindsay stepped in for him.

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Don't know if I ever told you this, Marv, but here's a great Howe story that happened to me.

About ten-twelve years ago, I was working for a company that sponsered Chris Chelios's annual golf outing and there were many NHL players at it. I had to sit at a table on one of the golf holes and answer questions about our companies cell phones and pagers.

You always wonder what you might say to an icon that you watched growing up, whether it's a musician, an athlete, etc. that impacted your life. I had just chatted with Stan Mikita, who said some hilarious and unprintable things about the playboy bunnies that were milling around, so I was already on cloud nine. Then, I see Gordie Howe!

Howe had a noticible limp and was struggling with all the walking. When he saw me up the hill about twenty feet away, he asked, "come here please,son. Can you help me?" Man, I jumped out of my chair and went down the hill and grabbed this hockey pioneer's arm to help him up.

So, what's the first thing this legend says to me?

"My fu**** knees are fu**** killing me. Don't ever get old, son."

Gotta love hockey players. As down to earth as anyone in the world!

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Great story Pat.

About 20 years ago, Kristy used to be a member of a Precision skating team. At the same arena it was very common to run into former NHL players, and I had the opportunity to meet Frank Mahovalich, Gordie, Bobby, as well as number of former Habs. They were all very cordial, and easy-going, even with the hordes of fans around them. Most of these guys came from pretty humble beginnings from small-town Canada, and even though they went on to very successful careers, they never forgot how they started.

I've only met 4 baseball players in my life (Pete Rose, Pedro Guerrero, Felix Jose, and Lenny Dykstra), and they were all rude and abrupt.

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Blackhawks president John McDonough just announced the NHL has invited the Blackhawks and Florida Panthers to open the 09-10 season in Prague, Czech Republic (this year the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning played there). The team will consider it before accepting the invitation, for what may be one or two games (thus, losing the gate to one home game next year).

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The 40,000 had to really enjoy the blustery conditions of Wrigley in January. Some of them reliving their youth of playing hockey on a pond that they had shoveled off. Wow....now that is nostalgia! At least the Hawks made it a game for awhile with that 3-1 lead in the first Period. But when Pavel Datsyuk skated through the whole team to go up 4-3...reality was setting in. I really enjoyed seeing our defenseman Brent Seabrook nailing Detroit's Dan Cleary and watching him sail over the boards into the Blackhawks bench was awesome. As someone else said, "Only a Fall Classic in Wrigley would be more special than what we experienced on Jan. 1. And we all know that more than Wrigley Field will have to freeze over for that to happen!!!"

Phil

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Great show at Wrigley yesterday. I heard over the holiday on the NHL radio station the if they did this next year at Boston (Fenway) it would probably be Montreal - Boston. The New York - Boston thing in hockey got killed years ago....half the time, as a Ranger fan, I pull for Boston to help the Rangers out.

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