Carolina managed to pull it out last night in a great Game 7, which capped off a great Stanley Cup Finals series. Certainly the best I’ve seen this millennium. The back and forth of the Devils-Ducks series was pretty fun, but that series had 4 (four!) shutouts. This series had two, but they were 4-0 and 5-0 beatdowns. The play of this year’s finals versus 2003 is night and day. Lots of skating and passing, and high speed hits.

I read that game 3 in L.A., shown at 5pm, lost in the ratings to I Love Lucy reruns. Not good. Game 1 lost nationwide to college softball. I don’t think that second stat is really a fair comparison, because the hockey game was on OLN, and softball was on ESPN. OLN isn’t available in 20% of homes, and I think ESPN is close to 100%. But the I Love Lucy stat is pretty brutal, because that’s in a market that has OLN and two NHL franchises.

I guess I could lament the loss of hockey from mainstream sports consciousness, but I’m not that concerned. I have season tickets and an internet connection. I can find just about as much hockey coverage as I want. As soon as they start streaming TV over the net, which OLN has done already, this will become a purely academic argument. Hockey isn’t talked about enough on ESPN or in the sports pages? Boo hoo. Heck, my favorite sports to watch on TV are hockey and beach volleyball. And I love watching cricket too, although I don’t understand about 50% of it. I guess I’m used to searching for good programming.