The View From Wisconsin

I wanna go on record right now: there is no truth to the rumor that Vegas is taking bets on which will be greater come Super Sunday - the score of the winning team in the Super Bowl, or the number of wins by the Detroit Red Wings.

I was very surprised that the opening line of the game was set at Pittsburgh by 3 1/2. I'd take that bet in a heartbeat, and even choose the Seahawks to win outright. I saw the NFC championship game Sunday, and swore I was watching clones of the Green Bay Packers from 1996 - except that the running back was 100 times better than Dorsey Levens.

This was a plus/minus weekend for hockey. The minus came Friday when Bryan Berard came forward with his positive USADA drug test, and his ensuing two-year ban from international competition. It gave guys like Dick Pound of WADA ammo to lump the NHL in the same basket as the rest of the sporting world - the professional sporting world, I might add. The plus was the great coverage by NBC on Saturday; the Peacock network is doing a great job in showcasing the game. The guys over at OLN should take note.

By the way: congrats to Luc Robitaille on passing Marcel Dionne for the all-time L.A. Kings lead in scoring. (No, I'm not going to make the obligatory reference to his wife, Stacia.)

As the sport has too many black eyes as it is, I'm glad that the whole situation with the World Baseball Classic and Cuba got sorted out. However, I do hope that the entire team, as soon as they set foot in the U.S., decides to defect. And I do mean the entire team.

Had an interesting dream the other night, about revisiting my grandma and grandpa's old house in Racine. The place looked like it did when I was growing up, but it was empty - something very much unlike what it was the last time I was there. My grandfather, bless his soul, had collected all sorts of things, and they were strewn around the house - including some snowblowers and rototillers sitting in the dining room. In the dream, I think I was just trying to imagine what it was like now - now that someone else was living there.

Gonna be a roller-coaster ride of emotions the next two nights for me: It's bad enough we have to play the Wings back-to-back, but now because of the Jiri Fischer situation, we're playing both games at the Joe in Detroit. I just hope we get some points out of the two games, because if we don't, we might as well resign ourselves to fourth in the West at best.