It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm sitting here watching the Canes (short for Hurricanes) play the Oilers for the Stanley Cup. Normally I don't give a flying phooey about ice hockey, but every once in a couple of years a local team makes it to the latter stages of the play-offs and all of a sudden the whole Triangle is into hockey like a bunch of canucks.

It's just before the start of the third period of the second game. The Canes are up 3-0. They won the first game 5-4. Both of these games have been in the RBC center over in Raleigh. I'm a bit curious about this 3 period thing that they have in hockey. All the other sports seem to go in halves or quarters, there's a definitive half-time so you can sell some kick-ass advertising time. But not hockey. I guess I forgot about baseball. It's got nine innings. That's pretty odd too, I guess.

Well the third third has started and I have to go back to watching. Hockey is a low scoring game so you have to watch it intently to have any chance of seeing something happen in real time. Most of the time you just watch a lot of guys do a whole lot of random stuff. I think there are some rules but there doesn't seem to be any good reason have any. You can't watch and see any rules having any effect.

Crap. I missed it. The Canes just scored again. Oh no! They disallowed it. The guy kicked it in. Oh yes! They just allowed it again. You can't kick the puck into the goal but you can use your foot to deflect the puck into the goal. The consensus was that it was a deflection and the goal counts.

The Oilers are pissed and beginning to act nasty. Being down 4-0, they don't have much of a chance of pulling this out. So all they can get out of here with is a bit of flesh. One of the Oilers whacked a Cane up side the head and got put in the penalty box so the Canes get to play with an extra player for a couple of minutes. It's called a power play. Whoops! Carolina just scored again on the power play.

5-0

Back to full strength. Looking bad for the Oilers. I'm gonna quit writing and go back to watching. Oops. Those nasty oilers just whacked another Cane with a stick. On the replay it didn't look intentional. Back to another power play.

Gotta run. Go Canes.