FanHouse Theicesheet

Just a few hours after the league announced its tentative schedule for the Stanley Cup Finals on May 22, it's safe to say a number of hockey fans weren't exactly happy.

Why? Thanks to the demands of television, specifically the requirements of the NHL's broadcast television partner, NBC, the league was looking at a Finals start date of as late as June 5 unless both respective conference finals were decided by four-game sweeps. Once the Blackhawks managed to win Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, that possibility was closed, and the prospect of a lengthy layoff after a lackluster third round had become a certainty.

It must be tough to be a Carolina Hurricanes fan. Consider this for a moment: twice in the last seven years the franchise formerly known as the Hartford Whalers has fought its way to the Stanley Cup Finals -- winning it all in the first year after the lockout in 2006 -- only to miss the playoffs the following two seasons.

In any other market, such a performance would be devastating. But in a non-traditional market like Raleigh, North Carolina, it very well could have been fatal. A Stanley Cup is supposed to cement a team's place in the heart of a community that it calls home, but runs like the team had in 2002 and 2006 were supposed to be performances to build on to fill the build, not memories to fall back on with failure just around the corner.

That a team with such a recent championship on its resume finished 21st overall in attendance this season has to be considered something of an embarrassment.

But here the Hurricanes are again, like the NHL's version of Hailey's comet, just four games from a third trip the Finals in the last six NHL seasons, with only the defending Eastern Conference champions, the Pittsburgh Penguins, in the way. Granted, that's one heck of an obstacle, but it still begs the question: how the heck did it happen?

Normally, I would have spent last Saturday afternoon sitting in the press box at Verizon Center to cover Game 1 of the semifinal series between the Capitals and the Penguins. To say this game has been eagerly awaited by most of the hockey world would be an incredible understatement, and as I outlined on Friday over at The Sporting Blog, I was as excited as anyone else to finally get to see these two teams have at it over the course of a seven-game series.

But alas, on this of all days, a family commitment would require me to travel to Long Island while Game 1 was being played 200+ miles away back in Washington. And from what I gathered from reading emails, Twitter feeds and just old fashioned talking with my friends on the phone (imagine that), I wasn't going to be the only one similarly indisposed on the first weekend in the month of May.

Then again, all I needed to do was hit the road on Friday night, and I'd still be able to watch significant chunks of the game on Saturday before a command performance with the family later on Saturday afternoon. In short, I had it all worked out, or so it seemed at the time.

All over North America this morning, hardcore hockey fans are saying a word or two of thanks to the Washington Capitals and the Carolina Hurricanes. Thanks to those two teams and the guts they displayed on Sunday by staving off elimination in their respective playoff series, we'll all get to enjoy the rare treat of a Tuesday night in April: not one, but two Games 7.

The Caps will host the beleaguered Rangers in Washington at 7:00 p.m., while the Devils and the Hurricanes will get things underway in Newark 30 minutes later. Needless to say, many of us will have our heads on a swivel most of the evening.

This year marks the 34th year in a row that I've watched the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And after all that time, you'd think I'd know better by now than to be surprised when a seed in the top half of the draw comes crashing to earth in the first round.

True to form, after just five days of action, the 2009 edition of the Stanley Cup Tournament hasn't disappointed when it comes to surprises. Sure, the higher seed is currently leading six of the eight series taking place in the first round. Then again, I'm sure nobody anticipated that two of the league's top four teams in the regular season -- San Jose and Washington -- would be grappling with the distinct possibility of being swept.

It was the great poet T.S. Eliot who wrote that "April is the cruelest month." With all due respect to Eliot, it's pretty clear he never watched NHL hockey in the month of March. Thank the hockey gods that the end is near.

It was back in September 2008 that we first heard the rumor that the Montreal Canadiens were planning on holding an outdoor game in Olympic Stadium as part of the franchise's centennial celebration. ESPN.com's Pierre LeBrun, appearing first on Hockey Night in Canada's Satellite Hot Stove segment and then in a blog post on Sunday, confirmed that the team has asked the league to host that game on November 28, 2009, two days after American Thanksgiving.

In isolation, it's easy to see the appeal. The last outdoor game held in Canada, 2003's Heritage Classic in Edmonton, was a true celebration of the game in every sense of the word. Given that nobody does hockey history quite like the Habs -- the closing of the Montreal Forum in 1996 was the showstopper to end all showstoppers -- there's every reason to believe that any event that they host be just as compelling.

And that's exactly why the league will probably say no.

From the outside looking in, I'm sure the Washington Capitals seem like a formidable playoff opponent. Their 92 points are good enough for third place overall in the Eastern Conference, giving them a 13-point lead over second place Carolina in the oft-maligned Southeast Division. As such, Washington is looking at no worse than a third-place finish in the conference and home ice in the first round of the playoffs.

Their young and fast lineup has scored 228 goals this season, fourth place overall in the NHL. Outside of the San Jose Sharks, no team has won more games at home than the Capitals with 26, as the home crowd at the Verizon Center has developed into one of the more boisterous -- and creatively nasty -- in the entire NHL.

So why, after watching this team all season long and seeing how deadly they can be do I still feel just a little uncomfortable with a little less than a month to go in the regular season? Well, Saturday night's 5-4 shootout win over Carolina provided more than a few examples of why I believe this team still has some work to do before the start of the playoffs.

It's safe to say that life has gotten just a tad uncomfortable in the nation's capital for the local hockey team. For most of the season, the storyline for the Washington Capitals has been pretty simple: building off their first playoff appearance in five seasons, a young team led by reigning MVP Alex Ovechkin had finally come into its own, dominating its division and taking its rightful place near the top of the standings of the Eastern Conference. The playoff success that had been eluding the franchise since its founding in 1974 was just around the corner.

For those of us who choose to cover the NHL, there are three times of year when interest in the game becomes most intense. For starters, there's the beginning of the season, when hope springs eternal for fans of all 30 teams. Thencomes the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, where fans of all 16 teams that qualify for the postseason tournament are allowed to dream just one more time about winning the Cup.

But nestled just a few weeks before that comes what has to be considered the most important day in the regular season calendar: the trade deadline. For all hockey fans, the trade deadline is a lot like an early Christmas. For fans of the buyers, there's thinking about how a new acquisition might represent the final piece in the puzzle to win a Stanley Cup. For the sellers, the trade deadline represents the wages of a lost season, with hopes that the bounty obtained in return for a veteran player might lead to a better tomorrow.

So, as we close in on the deadline set to expire on Wednesday March 4 at 5:00 p.m. EST, it probably makes sense to look back at the deadline deal in 1980 that more or less set the stage for the frenzy that started it all.