El Clasico!

Not sure if it was the spirited debate in yesterday's "comments" section, but there actually turned out to be two pretty entertaining games in the NHL playoffs last night, with goals to boot.  Crazy, I know.  Shame it happened on the night the fewest people watch TV.   Not like the NHL to screw things up badly at all, after all.  For tonight, Zdeno Chara is questionable for the Boston Bruins after a bout of "dehydration" yesterday that landed him in the hospital.  Weird.

GolTV has what is sure to be the sporting event of the weekend as Barcelona visit Real Madrid at 4pm.  The best news on GolTV is that they're going HD.  Amen!  That game will lead into a decidedly less quality Toronto FC hosting of DC United.  TFC need a win at home, if only to mix things up after a series of draws.

FA Cup action today with a Manchester derby in the offing in a little under a half hour at Wembley.  Tune into Setanta Sports for what should be a cracker of a game. 

The Toronto Blue Jays dumped the Boston Red Sox to 2-10 on the year now.  This is getting awesome in Beantown: the Sox suck, the Celtics limped to the regular season finish and look very flawed entering the NBA playoffs, Zdeno Chara is "dehydrated" with his Bruins in a virtual must-win before heading to tough-to-beat-at-home Montreal, and Tom Brady is turning into a weird, weird dude.

Winnipeg is about to start a season ticket campaign for their allegedly pending NHL squad.  Guess they missed the NHL's reaction to Jim Balsillie doing same in Hamilton?  Heard a comment that it costs about $90 million to operate an NHL team a season, and at an average of $100 a ticket, the Winnipeg squad would pull in $60 million in their 15,000 seat arena.  That leaves a pretty sizeable gap to fill from corporate sponsorship, TV and radio and so on.  Doesn't seem overly workable, does it?

It is Record Store Day, get on down to your local store and buy something.

I think national anthems at sporting events are largely pointless, but the fans at MLS expansion side Portland Timbers show us all how it is to be done.  Goosebumps. There was no lame screen prompts required to get the trained seals yelling "GO!" here.


Kiss cam fail at the ACC, courtesy of Jables.

Never have I seen better use of a ladder in a wrestling match, unintended though it may be.