What, you mean . . . there's more hockey?

Last Tuesday, the NHL had a game . . . Red Wings - Ducks, we believe. In the meantime, six days will have passed with a US holiday intervening before the NHL tries to start their stalled engine just as the "summer" is beginning for a lot of folks.

Way to keep hockey in the public eye, folks. It isn't bad enough hockey is harder to find on TV than a positive opinion of Gary Bettman, but now you take six days off. The Peerless wagers that there is more buzz about the Calder Cup tournament right now than the Stanley Cup. Damien Cox lays out the particulars in the Toronto Sun:

By Monday . . . NHL fans will also be attempting to re-familiarize themselves with the competition in general since it will have been six days since they will have seen an NHL game, not to mention nine days since images of Bryan Murray and Daniel Alfredsson appeared on their television screens, well, at least until NBC got bored with overtime and left for a horse race.

If Gary Bettman's administration was deliberately trying to kill interest in the Stanley Cup, it couldn't be doing much more.

Understand this – hockey fans wanted the NHL season over last week, not three weeks from now.

If Tuesday's Game 6 between Anaheim and Detroit had ended the season, it would have felt about right. Instead, it just began the long wait to the final.

Maybe The Peerless should string an extension cord and a TV out to the pool and enjoy winter's greatest sport.