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Green Bay Packers fans turned out in droves to welcome their Super Bowl championship football team back to town on Monday. Fans lined the city streets all along the Packers’ route from Austin-Straubel Airport back to Lambeau Field after the team’s plane landed around 1:45 p.m. The players and coaches traveled in a caravan of Green Bay city buses, and on some streets fans were lined up as much as five or six people deep, on both sides. The crowds grew considerably larger the closer the team got to Lambeau. Upon arriving at the stadium, thousands of fans were waiting...

TORONTO — Reebok Canada is offering a $10,000 reward, no questions asked, for the return of the stick and gloves Sidney Crosby used to score in overtime in Canada's Olympic championship victory over the United States. The equipment disappeared after Crosby tossed his stick and ripped off his gloves to celebrate. Hockey Canada says all of the equipment was collected and was being put into the players' bags when it was noticed Crosby's stick and glove were missing

This is going to be a great match. USA! USA! USA!

It may be the most anticipated hockey game in Canadian history. And with national pride at stake — and some serious ice bragging rights on the line — the country’s biggest puckhead has made his prediction. “I am calling it 5-3 for Team Canada,” declares Don Cherry. It won’t be long now until we find out. At 3:15 p.m. Sunday, the country will gather together to watch the gold medal match between Canada and the United States for hockey supremacy. “It just shows you the interest in hockey, the greatest game in the world,” Cherry said. And today, he said,...

VANCOUVER – From horse-racing conflicts to shuttering the big screen at Mellon Arena, NBC has given hockey fans as much anxiety and anger as watching Jay Leno sit in Conan's chair. The latest affront to puckheads: The U.S. vs. Canada men's preliminary-round showdown Feb. 21 won't be shown on NBC, but on cable's MSNBC at 7 p.m. EST. Instead, the Peacock will bring fans an exhilarating night of ice dancing, women's speedskating, men's freestyle skiing and men's giant slalom – rather than what amounts to an NHL all-star game on an international stage. To the surprise of no one, NBC's...

NHL Network's Button breaks down the East - NHL Network analyst Craig Button offers some clues as he breaks down the hockey scene for NHL.com. Expect a hard-fought battle in the West this season - NHL Network analyst Craig Button breaks down what we will see from the West in 2009-10.http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=500138

Looking for 6 more teams in our 16 team FREEPER hockey pool via Yahoo sports. Autodraft...trade, waive, pick up free agents. The software is excellent, it is all drag and drop. It is free to play. This will really enhance your enjoyment of the hockey season with a bunch of likeminded fellows, who, other than myself, should be quite easy to beat.

The Penguins' charter flight had just departed Detroit's airport in the early morning hours after they won the Stanley Cup on June 12 when general manager Ray Shero first heard the question. "Guys started asking right away, 'Are we going to the White House?' I was, like, 'Yeah, I think so,'" Shero said Friday. "It's not something you think about before you win, and it's not something you want to do just once." No strangers to the District of Columbia - they won Games 5 and 7 of a second-round playoff series at Washington's Verizon Center in the spring -...

Game 7 of the Final is hockey's ultimate contest For a hockey fan, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final is like waiting for Christmas: It seems like the big day takes forever to get there, but when it does, it's well worth the wait. Of course, Christmas comes just once a year. A Final series that goes the maximum seven games comes along infrequently. Since the NHL expanded from the Original Six teams in 1967, the championship round has gone the distance just eight times, including this year's Final between Detroit and Pittsburgh. If the Stanley Cup Final is...

Final game of Stanley Cup Playoffs tonight at 8pm on NBC.

Good morning power players. Lots of coverage from the NHL.com crew off of last night's 3-1 Wings' victory. Your lineup includes Shawn P. Roarke, Dave Lozo, Larry Wigge, Phil Coffey and John Kreiser. Coffey has the game story covered right here. In a game that perfectly illustrated the slippery nature of hockey, the Red Wings took advantage of the breaks presented to them -- especially the lively end boards at Joe Louis Arena -- and the Pens could only shake their heads at the numerous chances that defied logic and stayed out of the net. Roarke has a very interesting...

It has been a quarter-century since the NHL had a rematch in the Stanley Cup Finals. And when the Edmonton Oilers beat the Islanders in 1984, it wasn't just the Cup that changed hands, it was the end of one dynasty and the start of another. Tonight, the Pittsburgh Penguins step into Joe Louis Arena to begin their quest for revenge and the third Cup in franchise history. To win it, they'll have to take down a Detroit Red Wings team that has won four Cups over the last 12 years and has shown no reason why it can't add...

Detroit Free Press - link only http://www.freep.com/article/20090529/COL01/905290355

NEW YORK -- The NHL went against its previous plan, pushing up the start of the Stanley Cup Finals to avoid a long layoff. The league announced Wednesday night that Detroit will host Pittsburgh on Saturday night in Game 1 of the first championship rematch in 25 years. Last week, the NHL said the Finals would begin June 5 if both conference finals were not decided by Tuesday. Plan B was put in place because NBC and the league didn't want to stunt the excitement about the matchup that has a potential to draw nontraditional viewers. Detroit and Pittsburgh, though,...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Pittsburgh Penguins are on their way back to the Stanley Cup Final. The Penguins completed a four-game sweep of the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday night with a 4-1 victory at the RBC Center. Ruslan Fedotenko, Maxime Talbot, Bill Guerin and Craig Adams scored for the Penguins, who outscored the Hurricanes 20-8 and dominated play for most of the four games. Even in Game 4, when the Hurricanes jumped in front on an early goal by Eric Staal and shut down Penguins star Evgeni Malkin, they couldn't find a way to win....

Peter Zezel, Former NHL Player, Dies of Blood Disorder at 44 Former New Jersey Devils forward Peter Zezel dead at 44 Kevin Larkin/Associated Press Former Devil Peter Zezel, shown fighting for the puck in the 1997 Eastern Conference semi-final, died Tuesday after battling a blood disorder. Former NHL forward Peter Zezel, who played 23 games for the Devils in 1996-97 and 1997-98, died Tuesday in a Toronto hospital after battling a longtime blood disorder. Zezel, who fought hemolytic anemia for the past 10 years, recently underwent surgery to have his spleen removed and had also received chemotherapy treatments. He was...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8K7roZu3WU

A Portland man faces charges of burglary and drunken driving after his arrest atop a Zamboni machine at the Cumberland County Civic Center early Tuesday morning. Adam Patterson, 23, had inadvertently summoned the Portland Fire Department to the civic center by driving a forklift, with the forks raised, into part of the sprinkler system, setting off an alarm, police said. Firefighters responded at 2 a.m. to find Patterson trying to drive the large ice resurfacer, which was against an interior wall and not on any ice, police said. When officers arrived to arrest him, Patterson was sitting on the machine...

In a surprise move that made waves from St. Charles, MO to Belleville, IL, the St. Louis Blues placed former all-star goalie Manny Legace on waivers yesterday, and it's all Sarah Palin's fault. The season got off to a rocky start for Legace. On October 24, he slipped on a carpet laid on the Scottrade Center ice for Alaskan anger bear (TM Wonkette) Sarah Palin, who was there to drop the ceremonial first puck. He missed five games with a hip injury and was never able to regain the All-Star form he showed during the Blues' 2007-08 season. The last...

The trade deadline has come and gone, and there were some big deals! And some big signings of key players to their respective teams that will tighten the race towards the playoffs even more!