infinite improbability

Though i too am a hockey fan, blues all the way, I would have to say the super bowl is ten times more stressful to watch. With hockey the game can change so quick and even with 10 seconds left a game can be won with a quick shot. Whereas football there is so many more factors and outside influences. Take Rams Titans superbowl, that was so intense! So heart wrenching on both sides. I think a close superbowl is 10 times more stressful to watch, because its one game win or lose thats it. Hockey there's 7 games... which i've never been a fan of the whole 7 game or multi game series. I think march maddness and football have it right. You come to play, and if you don't do it, you go home because you shouldn't get a second chance. Hopefully Calgary will win, sorry Kathryn, but rooting for Tampa is like rooting for the Expos to win the World Series, its antithetical to hockey's very existence.

i agree with holton on why one should root for the flames (although they are the flames - so i guess the score is even). but, the super bowl? c'mon, that game is rarely fun to watch because its hardly ever close. there have been notable exceptions the last few years though, but even those have been superseded by 'wardrobe malfunctions'. nothing has more drama or heroism than the world series. see Kirk Gibson, '88 LA Dodgers; Jack Morris, '91 Twins, Joe Carter, Blue Jays, 1993; everyone on the Yankees 1996, 1998-2000; Edgar Renteria, 97 Marlins; Luis Gonzalez, Diamondbacks, 2001; Garret Anderson, 2002 Angels; Josh Beckett, 2003 Marlins. 11 out of 15 years with memorable championship moments ain't bad.

wow, I'm glad your first stanley cup was so stressfull, you'll like it even more when you have actual sports experiences to compare it to

Josiah, you're nothing more than one of those annoying fans who haven't lived in a city in years, if ever, but still continues to root for the team because they keep winning. Funny, I've never heard you being a Lions fan. Fans like you are even worse than bandwagoners. And then you mock us for our lack of long sports tradition, us, a state who's highschool football tradition is legendary. Do you know how many highschool football players from my county alone have gone on to win Super Bowls? Heck, forget the county, look at just my mom's alma mater--the Green Bay Packers haven't won a Super Bowl without someone from her highschool on the roster, not to mention the NCAA National Championships that guys from our county have contributed to. We're a lot like Canada and hockey in that regard--Florida hasn't done nearly as well in pro football as other parts of the country, but other teams in other cities sure as heck couldn't have done squat without all of the guys from Florida. And, getting back to hockey, since you didn't even grow up in Detroit and are only coasting on family loyalties, I have a hard time believing that the Red Wings winning or losing means any more to you than the success or failure of Penn State's football team means to me. There's no way that you can have the sort of emotional investment in a team when you haven't gone to the games year in and year out, good years and bad, and the reason that it's so stressful isn't because they haven't done it before, it's because this is the moment that I've been hoping for through the bad years, telling myself that some day, I would get to see the Lightning hoist the Cup, and then Saturday night, I find myself watching sudden death overtime, and the shots of the Cup being polished and it looks like it's slipping away and then the puck drops on the second overtime and 33 seconds in there's the shot and the red light goes on and the Lightning have won the game to send the series back home for game 7. You can't understand what it's like to root for a perpetual loser where it often seems like it would be easier to give up and jump on somebody else's bandwagon, but to hang in there and see the team have success. It's easy to be a fan of a powerhouse, or even of a loveable loser like the Cubs, but it's not easy to be a fan of a team that is pathetic in every possible way to be pathetic and that isn't loveable losers in the least bit, and if you haven't rooted for your team just as hard during the lean years, you aren't as much of a fan as someone who has.

Holton and DP, you two are just laughable. Holton, you come from one of the biggest bandwagon towns on the planet, a town that doesn't even deserve it's team because it doesn't give it the support that it should, and yet you're telling me that the Cup should go to Canada? And DP, you're from Texas, aren't you? It's not exactly the most traditional hockey state, but I bet you sure weren't complaining when the Stars won the Cup, or have you forgotten about that because you've already jumped off the bandwagon?

It's the sort of provincial attitude that you two and Roe have that's why hockey will be stuck in the minds of the American public as a second tier sport with bad ratings. The Lightning winning the Cup would, in the long run, help hockey because the sport is already growing in Florida by leaps and bounds and picking up all sorts of nontraditional fans (I've seen more non-white people watching Lightning games than I've seen in other cities, and that will translate into more non-white kids playing, which is what the NHL wants and needs because just having white fans isn't going to keep the league afloat for much longer), but no, all you care about is that it doesn't seem right for Lord Stanley to spend a year in Florida.

Have you ever been to a blues game? Cardinals Game? No I don't think so. Blues fans are the most intense fans in hockey. They are overly critical, but rightfully so, they've made it to the cups doorstep for so long and never tasted the victory. In a way the blues are run by a city wide democracy, the city wanted Cujo out because he chokes in playoffs (this year proved that yet again), he went, they wanted whiny brett hull out cause he tried to run the team, he went out, Shannahan... well he slept with one of his teammates wives so he had to get out.

They aren't about a band wagon, they've been there for too long to be a band wagon. Its not like Nashville or Atlanta, those teams would be considered band wagons. I recall watching the lightening a few years ago back when the only thing Tampa was known for was a football team with the queerest jersey's in the league and as I recall I saw 10 people in the smallest stadium I'd ever seen. You obviously have no idea what a band wagon is.

ANd if you even think about dissing the Cardinals fans than I might call the cops because if you think they are in some way band wagon fans then you must be on crack and I'll have you arrested for possesion. Any team that sells out games in the middle of a week with regular consistency is not a band wagon team. Any team that kicks butt wihtout a high priced line up is not a band wagon team. Sure the cards got some extra people to look at them when Big Mac came to town, but if you recall they've actually done better as a team without him prior and post Mac attack.

The rams, you can have, i'm not a rams fan and i think that is truly a sport where people jumped on the rams band wagon, but hey who wouldn't if after four or so years your team won the super bowl. For me the only st. louis football team is the Phoenix Cardinals, they should've brought them back and left the rams in california.

And lastly I don't like my sports teams to be younger than me aka Tampa Bay Lightening. You can have your cup Florida, though may the drink that flows from it be ever bitter, like me.

ok, (1) holton's right. st. louis is one of the best sports cities in America...ask any sports journalist. (2) i am from Texas, but i could care less about the stars. i certainly never said the cup should be in texas as opposed to florida. even in 97 when the stars won, i thought it odd. BUT, at least the stars moved from minnesota - they werent an expansion team with no history. i only began to follow hockey after watching patrick roy in the 1996 cup lead the avs to a win over some other (pathetic)florida team. what's that about provincial attitude? a texan rooting for a colorado team? how's that work?(3) never once have i heard anyone refer to floridian high school football as legendary. maybe it is, maybe it isnt, but youd think a legend would have been heard of outside the state. plus, each of the past twenty superbowl CONTESTANTS has had a player produced by the texas pop warner system. we're talking grade school, now.

Dude, you two come on my blog and insult my team and my city, and then you get mad when I criticize your fans.

Mock all you want, but we're the one who has the Cup, and neither of your cities could make it out of the first round.

Kathryn, don't get huffy and puffy, its all in fun, and tell your fellow floridians: You may have the cup... but the election will prove Florida's real worth. Try to get those cards punched right this time floridians.

That was only the rich but dumb northern transplants living in West Palm Beach who couldn't figure out how to vote, and in any case, all the counties in the Tampa Bay area knew how to vote.