When the NHL final begins Saturday with the Pittsburgh Penguins meeting the Red Wings in Detroit, Hockey Night in Canada will have Bob Cole calling the play and Greg Millen providing the analysis. Only Hockey Night in Canada would choose not to use Jim Hughson, the best hockey play-by-play man in the business today, in the Stanley Cup final. . . . Also included in the telecasts will be the usual cast of characters, including Ron MacLean, Don Cherry, Kelly Hrudey and Craig Simpson. . . . If you have access to XM Radio, you can tune in to Channels 204, 205 or 206 and get the NHL Radio feed (Sam Rosen, Bill Clement, Billy Jaffe and Jim Fox), the Detroit feed (Ken Kal and Paul Woods) or the Pittsburgh feed (Mike Lange and Phil Bourque). . . . It says here the Red Wings will beat the Penguins like a rented mule. . . .
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Former WHL head coach Todd McLellan, now Mike Babcock’s right-hand man with the Detroit Red Wings, is being mentioned as perhaps the next head coach of the Colorado Avalanche. Todd’s father, Bill, is the Medicine Hat Tigers’ head scout. . . . If you’re having trouble remembering hockey the way it used to be played, check out this story by Dave Gross of the Canwest News Service. Bench-clearing brawls . . . ahh, those were the days. . . .
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The QMJHL’s Montreal Juniors have signed Pascal Vincent as their head coach. He had been with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, where he won coach-of-the-year honours this season. The Juniors are relocating from St. John’s, Nfld., where they played as the Fog Devils and went 32-30-1-7. They didn’t get out of the first round of the playoffs. Vincent, who is from Laval, was 40-24-3-3 with the Screaming Eagles this season before losing a second-round series to the Halifax Mooseheads.
