Free Republic

SUNRISE, Fla. -- Welcome to the unimaginable. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final has been played 17 times since 1942, most recently in 2019 and before that 2011, 2009, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2001 and 10 times before the turn of the century.But not since 1945 has Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final been necessary after a team took a 3-0 lead in the series.Not until now that is, or, rather, Monday, when the Panthers and Edmonton Oilers play Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, play for everything from the Stanley Cup to history to legacies at Amerant...

We have seen plenty of fans get into physical altercations this year, but this one has a leg up on the others, literally. During Saturday night’s game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers, a fight broke out in the stands at T-Mobile Arena. There did not appear to be any blood, or fans getting knocked out or clothes ripped off, but it did have something we have yet to see: a prosthetic leg used as a weapon. It is tough to see exactly what is going on in the video, but it has a clear shot of a...

Matt Dumba of the Minnesota Wild became the first player to kneel for the U.S. national anthem in the National Hockey League (NHL) on Saturday night before the Chicago Blackhawks faced the Edmonton Oilers in Alberta, Canada. Dumba, who is Canadian, was invited onto the ice for a special ceremony, walking down a red carpet and delivering a speech about racial justice. He knelt for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but stood for “O, Canada,” the Canadian anthem. The scoreboard flashed a slogan with a hashtag: “We Skate for Black Lives.” “During this pandemic, something unexpected, but long overdue, occurred,” Dumba said,...

Tonight, on NBC, teams from the unlikely cities of Edmonton, Alberta and Raleigh, North Carolina, are playing game 6 of the Stanley Cup hockey championship – largely unnoticed except by rabid fans in those cities. The game of hockey, which requires the greatest skill set and personal courage of the players and is easily the fastest and most demanding of all team sports, has fallen on bad times despite the influx of Russian, Scandinavian and Eastern European hockey players with amazing skills that challenge the dominance once held exclusively by our Canadian neighbors to the north. The all-important television ratings...