Tuesday May 18th - Morning Briefing

-Even though Sportsnet had the television rights to the Blue Jays and Twins game last night, they decided to use all four of their regional stations to play the Calgary/Windsor Memorial Cup game. Considering the interest in the hockey game would lie in the prairies and Southern Ontario, and considering many Canadians have digital cable with all regional networks, wouldn’t it make sense to use the East feed to show the baseball game? Or even the Pacific feed, so British Columbians could see their own Justin Morneau go 3-for-4 with two jacks. The Twins walked all over the Jays and won 8-3.

-Meanwhile, in a game that was televised, Taylor Hall scored twice and his Spitfires got some stellar goaltending from Philipp Grubauer on their way to a 6-2 shelling over the Calgary Hitmen. Martin Jones, the WHL goaltender of the year, has looked obnoxiously average so far this tournament, being bailed out Monday night by his defensemen and the post several times. The Spitfires qualify for Sunday’s final with a chance to defend their title.

-Down in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant put up 40 including 21 in the 3rd, Lamar Odom had 19 points and 19 boards and the Lakers thoroughly dismantled Victoria’s Steve Nash and his Phoenix Suns in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals 128-107. Nash had 13 points and 13 assists, but the Suns couldn’t shoot, going .494 from the floor and .227 from beyond the arc.

-Darren Dreger has tweeted that Ian Laperriere will not play Game 2. Philadelphia GM Paul Holmgren has pretty much told us to wait for Laperriere to play before Jeff Carter does. No word on whether or not Peter Laviolette is going to give Daniel Carcillo the role of blocking a P.K. Subban shot with his face.

-Dave Staples of The Cult of Hockey has an excellent piece on Taylor Hall’s penchant for getting hit hard, and often. The post contains a video of Hall getting stapled by Travis Hamonic in his first game at the Memorial Cup. Solid stuff.

-Welcome to The ‘Eh’ Factor. Bear with us while we sort this beast out. Canada and the Czech Republic are playing live on TSN2 right now. Canada is losing 3-1 at the end of the second period. If you were planning on catching the replay later, well, forget I said that. Moncton and Windsor play later tonight. So do both NHL Conference Finals series, as well as Game 2 of Boston/Orlando, if you’re into that sort of thing.