Last night the finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs started. My beloved Chicago Blackhawks weren’t in it. Sigh. I was cheering for them all the way through. Everyone said it would be Detroit and Pittsburgh, but I was hoping…

Why was I cheering for Chicago? I have “girl reasons”
1. There are a couple of players from Winnipeg on the team.
2. Winnipeg is known as the Chicago of the north.
3. Nikolai Khabibulin (He used to play for the Winnipeg Jets)
4. I just wrote a book about a hockey player who plays for a fictional Chicago team J

So now I’m cheering for Pittsburgh. My “girl reasons”:
1. Sidney Crosby
2. Sidney Crosby
3. Sidney Crosby

Okay I’m old enough to be his mother, but the kid is cute. Although that whole playoff thing of not shaving doesn’t work for him. And he’s mega talented.

Too bad they lost. But it was a great game, lots of action. The way Detroit used the boards and bounced the puck off them to score two goals from behind Marc-Andre Fleury was annoying but kinda cool. And the opening, with the giant octopus - gotta hand it to Detroit, they've taken that whole octupos thing which I never really got and made it their own!

And, on hockey playoff overload, the Manitoba Moose for the first time ever made it into the Calder Cup playoffs and their first game against the Hershey Bears (okay who picked that name?) was also last night. I wasn’t at the game, although a record setting crowd was. Unfortunately the Moose lost in what had to a be a white-knuckle heart-breaker - 5-4 in overtime. Aaaah!

Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final is tonight (unusual, they usually have a day between) and I’ll be watching!