So, I got an interesting e-mail from a buddy of mine.  He’s all up on the Twitter (I can’t keep up with all this newfangled social-networking stuff…) and got a tweet from a friend of his today.  Interesting thought here…

Apparently, there’s a page up on NHL.com where you can pre-order all of your Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Championship paraphernalia – 90 items listed as of 2pm EST today.  But a search for “Penguins Cup Champs” (the Pittsburgh equivalent of the name of the page where the Red Wings gear is located) returns only items from the Penguins two previous cups.  In fact, there is nothing related to the 2009 Stanley Cup on the Penguins side of the rink – the only “Penguins Champions” gear you can find is Eastern Conference Champs or the 1992 Stanley Cup.

I tried to alleviate his fear of the Cup Finals being fixed: “All sports teams do this once they reach the finals.  They allow pre-orders of stuff like this, and then if their team loses this all gets shipped to some third world country as a donation.  That’s why there’s a whole shitload of kids living in some desolate African Nation that think the Patriots went 19-0 two years ago.”

My buddy countered with “Find the Pens one then…” He’s a Pens “second team” fan behind the Bruins, so I again tried to answer with some BS about “Teams aren’t allowed to start the manufacturing or marketing until their team has a championship clinching game…  the Pens wouldn’t be allowed to start marketing it until today, and probably not until after some of the gear has at least been created… considering the complete incompetence of the NHL, it’s not surprising that it isn’t up yet.  They’ll probably start the marketing blitz sometime around August…“  Then I started thinking – Holy shit, none of that makes any sense.

I know the Wings are currently the favorites to win it all – somewhere in the (-175) range on most of the big boards around town – but you’d think the NHL would at least pretend like the winner wasn’t already determined.  For a league trying desperately to rebuild a fanbase, you’d think one of the biggest things they’d be wary of is any sense of impropriety in their championship series.

Do I think the series is fixed?  Of course not.  But I was already planning to watch Game 7, now I’ll just be keeping a real close eye on the calls.

* Note: There is ZERO Chance Sparty agrees with this post…

Sparty Note: Puckdaddy was able to get to the bottom of this. There has been Penguin stuff made.  That is good news for Detroit.

Sparty Note 2: Well, now we know Donaghy was not involved. He was busy getting a beatdown in prison.

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