Shaved Ice – April 8

Rainy Monday.

Yesterday the NHL confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in sports – that the Winter Classic and Hockeytown Winter Festival will still be coming to our great state. Here’s our coverage of the press conference (held on the ice at Joe Louis Arena), and a compilation of our tweets from throughout the morning.

The Wings also played a hockey game yesterday, thought that wasn’t as exciting as the Winter Classic news for the Hockeytown faithful.

It was our first chance to catch up with Dan DeKeyser since he made his NHL debut on Friday – click here to see what the former Western Michigan Bronco had to say about his whirlwind first weekend as a pro hockey player.

Congrats to the Honeybaked Bantam Major squad…they can now call themselves national champions. Double OT victory against Shattuck-St Mary’s? Now that’s some Mitten Pride.

Speaking of Mitten Pride, 25 Michigan natives were selected in Saturday’s Ontario Hockey League Priority Selection. Click here to see the full list.

And four Michigan natives have been selected to represent the U.S. in the Under-18 Worlds in Sochi, Russia that starts in 10 days.

Winnipeg Jets video in our ‘Highlight Reel’ section? Yep. Zach Redmond’s back on the ice. Remarkable. So glad the Traverse City native is going to be able to return to hockey after such a gruesome injury.

TSN’s Bob McKenzie just tweeted that Ryan Kesler will be in the line-up for the Canucks tonight. Best of luck to our Michigan boy, hope he can stay healthy for a while.

Former Plymouth Whalers star James Neal is out with a concussion. All of a sudden, the Penguins are dropping like flies.

Michigan’s getting a Winter Classic next year. Sounds like Cali is, too. The Kings are hoping to play at Dodger Stadium in January. Wonder how that’s going to work out…

Alex Ovechkin had extra company on the way to an empty-netter yesterday…

Big Game. Big House.

We’ll see you around at some point.