Just some assorted ruminations:

Now that the NHL playoffs are down to two series, Jim Hughson is no longer calling the games, and that's too bad. In Canada, CBC is using their usual team of Bob Cole and Harry Neale, and TSN has moved back to Gord Miller and Pierre McGuire, as Chris Cuthbert's services will no longer be necessary for The Sports Network this season. Now, I do enjoy listening to Gord Miller, but Pierre McGuire makes me want to beat my head off things; on the CBC side, I used to love hearing Bob Cole every Saturday night, but bless his heart, he just doesn't have it anymore. Miller and Neale would be a decent tandem, but that just won't happen. This is rather inconsequential in terms of the game of hockey itself; it just irks me that I need to tune out half of the commentary in order to keep my sanity.

Update (2006-05-24): It turns out that CBC is indeed carrying some of the Eastern Conference Final, so the duo of Hughson and Greg Millen is still getting some work.

At the World Championships in Riga, Latvia, Canada skated to another fourth-place finish. Is it just me, or are Canadian men just not fans of bronze-medal games? They were slaughtered 5-0 by the Finns, and if you'll remember all the way back to 1998 in Nagano, they put in another lacklustre performance - again, against Finland. Now, maybe these seem like very separate occurrences, or maybe you could even say that Team Finland really shows up to battle for that third spot, but it seems like after the Canadians are out of gold medal contention, they always roll over and die. Just my two cents.

Back to the NHL, it's really been a strange second season so far, one made possible by the salary cap. Rather than the usual formula of at least one top team in the Cup finals, it's entirely possible that there could be two Cinderellas at the ball. Sure, the Hurricanes played a very good season and finished second in the Eastern Conference, but I'm not sure anyone's ever seen them as a juggernaut. Maybe that's because not many people have ever taken the 'Canes seriously anyway, or because they played 32 of their 82 games against the East's weakest division, but
the bottom line is that none of the remaining four teams were on anybody's list as a surefire Cup bet at the season's beginning. But of those four, my money's on Edmonton. The Oil is on fire, and I'm not sure anyone's going to be able to put it out.