Hurricanes win Stanley Cup!

I know I'm a little late, but wanted to add my congratulations to the Carolina Hurricanes on their 1st Stanley Cup Championship in the National Hockey League. They also brought the first professional sports championship to North Carolina, and the Carolina region collectively.

I'm sure original fans of the Hartford Whalers and Hartford, Connecticut are celebrating too as the original location of the franchise before it moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. To add a local spin to it, Portland, Oregon had a reason to celebrate for Glen Wesley, a former member of their Western Hockey League Portland Winterhawks from 1983 to 1987. I'm sure I saw him play in one of those games during that time. He finally won his first championship in his 18th season in the NHL. He played 1,479 NHL regular season and playoff games, eighth most in NHL history before finally getting a chance to hoist the Cup.

It's always great to see a new team win a championship for the first time, the southern NHL teams have dominated the past two season with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning the championship in 2004 and got to hold the Stanley Cup for two years due to the unfortunate labor dispute that cancelled the 2005 season.

On my list of teams I like you may have noticed there are a lot from North Carolina. I have never in the Carolina's but have visited there. I probably have been facinated with North Carolina since I found out Richard Petty lives there. On my cross country vacation in 1995 I stopped by Randleman, NC and saw the original little white house and homestead of the Petty family and took a picture from outside the fence. It was a Sunday and they weren't open for a tour of Petty Enterprises. I have also always liked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tar Heels, mainly the basketball team. Their powder blue and white was the same color as my high school team. The Tar Heels have such a strong heritage in college basketball including players like Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Brad Daugherty, Sam Perkins, Vince Carter, the list goes on and on who ended up playing in the NBA and winning championships. North Carolina is also the heart of stock car racing and I am a big racing fan.