Who else is excited for hockey season???

[count2infinity]

Pens start defending their Eastern Conference Championship on saturday in Sweden, and I for one am excited that hockey is going to be back on the air. Pens look strong this year. I think top to bottom this is a better team that last year's team and with Whitney and Gonchar down it's time for Kris Letang to shine on D. MAF should get 40 or more wins this year, and Jordan Staal is going to have a break out year. And if anyone thinks that Malkin and Crosby aren't going to have a big year they should consult a doctor. Any other thoughts on the team?

[WALTER4]

I'm excited to see how Satan and Fedotanko do now that they're with a good team. They're supposed to be great scorers and good possession players but it hasn't really shown since they've been stuck with the Islanders the last couple years. I'm also kind of wondering how the special teams will do this year with the absence of Malone, Hossa, and Ruutu...and now with Whitney and Gonchar out how will they handle the power play and penalty kill situations?

[count2infinity]

For the powerplay, don't be surprised to see 4 forwards and 1 defenseman, similar to what they did at the end of the year last year with Crosby, Malkin, Fedetenko/Sykora, Satan, and Letang on the ice. As far as the penalty kill goes, you've got talbot and staal (2 of our very best penalty killers) with a very solid defense of eaton, gill, letang, orpik, etc. and some of the other guys like kennedy, crosby and malkin will be killing penalties too.

[ham55]

I'm very interested to see the level of play Hal Gill puts forth this year, especially early. He was a big big player for the Penguins on defense in the post season last year, but with a lot being placed on his shoulders early in the season, I wanna see how he responds.

[The Ancient Enemy]

What's a good site to check for hockey coverage other than TSN?

[count2infinity]

if you're looking for watching hockey games? it's TSN and VS... For some reason the comish signed a deal with VS. and so they can't air any hockey games on espn or it's family of networks. If you're looking for hockey news stories, TSN is decent, Yahoo is horrible, Espn is ok, really the best way is to go team website to team website for news (or blogs like insidepittsburghsports.com)

[The Ancient Enemy]

I think I'm gonna try to honestly get as into hockey as I am into college football, because it REALLY seems like hockey coverage is lacking quite a bit.

[count2infinity]

well after the lockout a lot of networks were afraid to really commit to the NHL. VS. did say they'd air NHL games nationally. then in 2007 Bettman extended the contract to 2010-2011 season. Unfortunately they don't show a large amount of games and they're part of some cable provider's services and not others, where ESPN is on most to all. they could have even went with some other network like TNT, TBS, etc. etc. but unless you get the NHL center ice package or move to canada, you're not going to be seeing many non-pittsburgh games which is sad.

[The Ancient Enemy]

How much is Center Ice?

[count2infinity]

i think it's like 150 bucks for the season or something like that... too much for a poor college student to afford unfortunately. and not that i'm suggesting watching illegally online, but that certainly is a possibility.