Final Round of the Playoffs!

The hockey season has been building up for 8 months to one seven-game series, and the excitment is literally palpable. I can physically reach out into the air and grab a piece of the hockey excitement with my hand and squeeze it. It feels not unlike a goaltender's pads and it sends a tingle up through my fingers and arm and straight into the hockey gland in my brain. And you can feel it too. If you are one of the anyone who is anyone north of the 48th parallel then you are impatiently awaiting the first game of the final playoff series tomorrow night between the Manitoba Moose and the Hershey Bears (starts at 5:30 PT, 7:30 CT, 8:30 ET, click 'listen live').

The Calder Cup Playoffs have been a hockey haven of excitement for any of the vast majority of fans whose team has been eliminated from the bigger, more popular, but actually (it turns out) less cool version of the AHL. If you're one of the hundreds of millions of Canucks fans, or if you're anything but a (loyal, non-) bandwagon I'm-from-detroit-and-LA-but-I'm-a-Lakers-fan-and-a-Wings-fan-because-the-Kings-and-Pistons-and-Clippers-suck then your interest and attention have probably turned to the AHL affiliate of the Victoria Salmon Kings and Vancouver Canucks [or maybe the Hershey (squirt) Bears] and their spectacular hockey of late.

After writing hockey history with such plays as Moose Captain Mike Keane's best goal ever, and the Moose's epic comeback to force overtime against the Houston Aeros, the final round of playoffs will undoubtedly bring us nothing short of heartstopping action, literally. You will die if you watch. It's a good thing it's not on network TV.

GO MOOSE!