from Harry Bruinius of the Christian Science Monitor,

Within the cacophonous rhythms of American sports, the National Hockey League has always played the wild and somewhat dangerous cousin to its richer and more polished relatives in the nation’s “big three” sports, its players known for multiple broken noses and toothless grins – a shaggy-haired lot with “oat and a boat” accents from the frozen north.

But the sport of slashing sticks and blades will have a bigger stage on Wednesday when the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings clash in the nation’s two most brightly-lit media markets, a West Coast/East Coast faceoff featuring Hollywood glitz and Broadway glamor.

But that just glides over the surface of this year’s battle for Lord Stanley’s Cup. The symmetry of these major-market teams is matched by a host of improbable storylines filled with unprecedented comebacks, team-galvanizing losses, and some of the fastest and toughest skaters in the world.

At first glance, the matchup appears to be one of those big-favorite-versus-heavy-underdog stories.

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