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Sports Catechism: NHL: 2 teams are 4 wins away from 2015 Stanley Cup

Q: What is a catechism

A: A summary of the principles of Christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for the instruction of Christians. It is also a series of fixed questions, answers, or precepts used for instruction in other situations.

Q.  Why a sport's catechism?
A: Because sports loyalty is sometimes described or lived out in spiritual terms.  
Examole.  The Cubs faithful were delighted with the late inning heroics in today's game.  

Q: What is the Stanley Cup?

A: It is the Championip Trophy of the National Hockey Leagu (NHL)

Q:  How many NHL teams are there? 
A: 30.  The 30 teams are divided into 2 conferences (Western and Eastern)  and divided further into divsions


Q: What is required to win the Stanley Cup

A: 16 playoff wins

Q:  How many teams go to the playoffs?

A:16

Q: What is the playoff format?

A: The top 3 teams in each division qualify for the Playoffs.  The next best 2 teams in each conference qualify as wild cards.  So each division can have as many as 5 and as few as 3 teams participating in the post season.  The 16 teams are seeded as the top 3 teams from each divison 1-3  respectively and the wild card teams seeded 4th.  The division champion in each conference with the better record plays the wild card team with the worse record in the 1-4 match ups.

Q: Which teams qualified for the playoffs this year.

A: In the Atlantic division of the Eastern Conference the,Montreal CaLightinnadiens were seeded 1st, Tampa Bay Lightning 2nd, Detroit Red WIngs 3rd and the Ottawa Senators were the first Eastern Wild card: In the Eastern Conference's Metropolitan Divison 1st was New York Rangers, 2nd Washington Capitals, 3rd New York Islanders and Pittsburg Penguins as the 2nd Eastern Wild Card.  Montreal drew Ottawa , Leaving New York for the Penguins, and the 2nd and third teams in each division faced each other.  In the Western Conference's Central division 5 teams made the playoffs the top 3 finishers were (in order) St. Louis (Blues), Nashville (Predators) and Chicago (Black Hawks) .  3The Western Conference wildcard teams from the Central were in order Minnesota (Willd) and Winnipeg (Jets) The Pacific divison top 3 finishers were the Ducks (Anaheim) Canucks (Vancouver) and Flames (Calgary).  The Blues drew the Wild leaving the Jets for the Ducks.

Q: The first team to win 16 games wins the Stanley  Cup how does that work.

A: A series of 4 rounds of playoff games matchups where the first teams to win 4 games go on to the next round.

Q: How many teams are left now:

A: Two

Q: How did the first round play out

In the East

Canadiens 4 Senators   2
Lightning    4 Redwings 3
Rangers     4 Penguins  1
Capitals     4  Islanders  3

In the West

Wild             4 Blues        2
Blackhawks 4 Predators 2 
Ducks          4 Jets          0  
Flames        4 Canucks   2

This left 8 teams remaining each looking for 12 more wins

Q: What happened in the next 2 rounds"

In Round 2 The Lighting beat the Canadiens in 6 games, Where the Rangers need 7 to advance past the Capitals.  The Ducks doused the Flames Stanley Cup chances in 5 games.  The Blackhawks swept the Wild in 4.  
4 teams remained with 8 more wins needed for the Cup.  

The Conefernce Finals took 7 games to settle with the road teams (Lightning and Blackhawks) each beating the home squads (Rangers and Ducks).

Q: Which team has the home ice in the FInals?
A; Tampa Bay

Q: What is the Playoff record for each of the remaining teams in the last 10 seasons excluding this one
A: Lightning 5 apperance in 10 years 2 straight playoff appearance (including this year)

1 Stanley Cup Championship 03-04
3 Conference Quarter Final losses ( 05-06,06-07,13-14)
1 Conference Final loss 10-11
Total playoff wins in last 10 season 30 plus 12 this year for total of 42

Blackhawks 6 appearance in 10 years, 7 straight playoff appearances (including this year)
2 Stanley Cup Championships (9-10 and12-13)
2 Conference Final losses (08-09 and 13-14)
2 Conference Quarter Final Losses (10-11 and 11-12)
Total playoff wins in last 10 season 57 plus 12 this year for total of 69

Lions and Podcasts and Robotics. Oh My!

White Lion
Originally uploaded by Cyberslayer

Friday Fragment time. I am finally teaching my blog class at our co-op this semester. For the student's first assignment I had them look at some home schooled students blogs. While doing that Bunny girl came across a post about a white lion. I decided to start today's fragment fest with a pic of White Lion cubs.

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The following video is on my desk top. This means my kids like to watch it over and over and over and over and over and over again. (It is short.)

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Speaking of videos, the Office starts new episodes tonight. They have also put out a new bunch of webisodes called The Podcast. I thought I would share it here as blogging is a plot point.

The Office - Ep 101: The Podcast: Gabe's Podcast - Video - NBC.com

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Robotics update: Spider Droid's team did quite well at the State Playoffs this past weekend. His team finished 19th of 63 teams in the performance category. The other 3 categories are scored by judges and the results were not made public. While they did not win any awards they all had a rewarding time. The team will compete in the Spring in a 4H robotics competition.

That is all the fragments I have for today. Head over to half past kissing time for more Friday Fragments.

And the Winner is . . . Me, Not Cougars.

Labor Day 2010

If I made a list of things I really like, libraries, winning things, and minor league baseball would be pretty high on it. None of them would be as high as spending quality time with my family. But when I can spend quality time with my family that involves libraries, minor league baseball and winning ,that's what I call fun.
In fact you can even call it fun on a budget.

Let me explain. . .

Fun on a Budget is in a 3-way tie for 12th in the labels I used most in my first 300 posts. Fun on a budget is not really about saving money. It's about having fun without breaking the bank, but it's mostly about having fun.

Let's take today for example. This summer, all 3 of my children participated in a summer reading program at our local library. I have gone on an on in these pages about about how I feel about libraries. Summer reading programs may be the cream of the library crop. The reading program ended over a month a go and we are still reaping the benefits. Yesterday we used a restaurant coupon one of the kids earned and today all 3 kids used vouchers they earned for a ticket each to the final regular season game of our local minor league baseball team. Sure, Amy and I had to buy tickets but that only cost us $20.00 total. That's less money than I spent on parking at last Sunday's White Sox game. (Cougars parking was free.)



The thing I like most about minor league baseball is that it's basically a circus with a baseball game in between. The fans eat the peanuts rather than the elephants. Every 1/2 inning there is some cool event. Today was extra special since it was fan appreciation day. It seemed like they gave something away after every pitch.



Another thing I like about it is the cool teams names. I have seen Bees, Bombers, Chiefs, and Sand Gnats just to name a few. Today it was the Cougars vs. the Timber Rattlers. The home team Cougars who had already clinched the playoffs seem to phone it in, losing to the Rattlers 7 to nothing.



But all was not lost. In one of the every 1/2 inning fun events I mentioned earlier, they picked a random fan to participate in a game called true or false. Faithful readers know that they could not have picked a more random fan than yours truly, and pick me they certainly did.



The idea of the game is they say two statements about the Cougars. I was given a sign that said true on one side and false on the other. With the help of the audience, I have to choose if the statements are true or false. Now, this was my first game of the season so I wasn't exactly up on Cougars trivia. So I did what I did on more college exams than I would like to admit, I guessed.

And I scored about the same as I did on some of those exams, 50%. But instead of getting a fat juicy F, I was given a really cool Cougars cap. I collect baseball caps, so this was really really cool.



Libraries, Minor League baseball and winning things you collect are 3 examples of fun on a budget. I hope this blog post has given you some fun on a budget as well, as all it probably cost you was a few minutes of reading time.



Next Time: Bob Newhart Loves Dave and other Short Stories