First, a question: Why on earth does professional hockey, clearly a winter sport, not complete its season until JUNE? If the Stanley Cup series goes until the last game, it won't be over until June 11! From the NHL.com website, it looks like the season begins in September. With the possible exception of NASCAR (depending on whether or not that can really be considered a sport) hockey has the longest season of any American professional sport. This year, the Chicago Blackhawks will be playing the Philadelphia Flyers for the championship. Chicago is already 1 up in the series.
It is a strange thing to leave your apartment in the middle of the day and have Cubs fans stumbling around your neighborhood and Blackhawks fans screaming in your ears. I say: One or the other, please! There should be a rule against this type of doubling up of sports.
I feel I must explain this tirade: My cable isn't working properly (when I hit "Guide" the screen goes blank, when it should really be showing me the programs across channels) so when I turned it on this morning to HBO and a documentary about the Philadelphia Flyers came on, I didn't bother changing the channel. The film nearly had me crying when it went on about downtrodden Philly, those losers of the 70's and how a hard-scrabble bunch of fighters brought them pride. The team wins the Stanley Cup twice in '74 and '75 then goes on in '76 to defeat the Russian team, single-handedly saving the U.S.A. from the terror of Communism.
This made me stop and think. What do Philadelphia, punching, underdogs, and beaten Commies have in common? ROCKY! and Rocky rhymes with Hockey! If you leave out the original Rocky, wherein the southpaw is just edged out by Apollo Creed (and completely disregard Rocky V, which should go without saying), Rocky II, III, and IV very closely parallel the story of the Broad Street Brawlers. Coincidence? I think not.
Sylvester Stallone should really explain himself.
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