June 15th -- handshakes

Like most people on Friday night I was glued to the T.V. watching game 7. I say most people because I was at a birthday party for this girl on our softball team. Kind of figured the game would be on in the background and that most if not everyone would be watching it. Turns out the game was on but I found myself to be all alone on the couch watching the game while everyone sat outside on the deck. Sure it was a nice night but what is wrong with people? The wife was a little irritated that I was being anti-social but understood it was game 7 and she was fighting a losing battle. Next year I'm faking food poisoning and staying home.

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So by the end of the game I was cheering for Detroit. Not so much rooting for the Wings as I was pulling for overtime. I just didn't want this series to end. I'm not a Red Wings fan and I'm not a Penguins fan. I think Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Nick Lidstrom and Henrik Zetterberg are four of the best players in the world but don't feel any particular need to cheer for anyone of them. I felt relatively impartial about the whole thing.

While impartial on the series I do take the handshakes pretty seriously as I do believe they are something that makes our sport so great. Whether it's the Pontiacs, the Panthers, the Mintos or the X-Men I've always described the post series handshakes as one of the best moments in all of sports.

By now most of you probably think I'm going to pile on Sidney here but I wanted to look something up first.

The 2008 Stanley Cup Celebrations the Red Wings celebrated for 2 minutes and 11 seconds before the handshakes began.

Now we get to the 2009 Stanley Cup Celebrations and Kris Draper says "Nick was waiting and waiting and Crosby never came over to shake his hand". Well with the help of YouTube we see that Nick's "waiting and waiting" was 2 minutes and 15 seconds before the handshakes began. A whopping 4 seconds longer. That's a pretty long time there Kris. If only Nick knew Tai Chai he could have put Crosby in some sort of head lock during those four seconds.

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Sorry about the lack of blogging lately. It's been pretty quiet around Pontiacs camp and I've been spending my prime blogging time in the morning reading the fantastic NHL entry draft team by team reports the guys over at the Pipeline show are doing. Check them out over on the right. Those guys do great work.

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Stanley Cup and Star Wars. It doesn't get better than this.

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I've got a meeting with Chad Mercier this morning so I'll get some sort of report as to what the team has been up to and pass it along.

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Happy Birthday former Pontiacs forward Adam Wright.