That crescendo coming out of Chicago that sounds like a massive glacier cracking in two is yet another indication that the pre-1950 hockey marketing strategy that the late Bill Wirtz stuck to so doggedly up to his death is beginning to crack. This morning Sports Business Daily reported that the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago White Sox have completed a far-reaching co-marketing agreement that will result in both teams promoting the other in each other's building, something that doesn't happen a lot in the sports world:

The pact, signed for one year but eyed for a longer term, will begin today at the White Sox' home opener with a video to be shown at the stadium that will feature Blackhawks RW Patrick Kane and C Jonathan Toews in White Sox hockey jerseys. Other activations in the partnership include a Shoot The Puck promotion on the top of the White Sox dugout during each game at U.S. Cellular Field, a Blackhawks night at the ballpark set for August 23 and Blackhawks theming in White Sox game presentations, such as the use of the hockey goal horn for home runs.

This is all great news for the Blackhawks, who seem to be awaking with a vengeance from a long marketing slumber induced by their late owner, most recently when the team announced that it would actually air all 82 games next season on local cable and broadcast television in Chicago.

But while this deal might be groundbreaking for the folks in Chicago, it's not as original as SBD makes it out to be. Here in Washington, the marketing staff, at the behest of owner Ted Leonsis, has gone out of its way to co-market with MLB's Washington Nationals as well as, to a lesser extent, D.C. United of MLS.

The Nationals and the Caps have been involved with in-game advertising for better than a season, with members of the Caps making regular appearances at both RFK Stadium and now the new Nationals ballpark. In fact, the next appearance comes tonight, as head coach Bruce Boudreau, goalie Cristobal Huet and defenseman Mike Green take part in a variety of pre-game festivities before a game with the Florida Marlins.

Joe Gannascoli waddled into pop culture history for his role as Vito Spatafore on "The Sopranos," playing a mob henchman who happened to be a closeted homosexual. The scenes where Meadow Soprano's boyfriend found Vito in a compromising position with a construction site security guard, and when two mobsters found a leather-clad Vito at an S&M club, were among the classic series' squirmiest; his demise was one of the more violent moments.

Gannascoli is also a huge sports fan, dying his dog blue to support the Giants and supporting New York's hockey teams, including having conducted interviews with Islanders greats like Kenny Morrow. Last night in Chicago, during the Blackhawks' 6-2 win over the Red Wings, Gannascoli came out on the ice for one of those between-periods carnival games: Shooting a puck from center ice into a small opening in the middle of the net down the ice. From MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this morning, here's what happened:



The "Score-o" double whammy from center ice is a rare and impressive athletic feat. That first one's for Vito; that second one's all for you, Johnny Cakes...

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

It's been a rather frustrating year for Sidney Crosby as he's fought an ankle injury and watched as Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin steal his spotlight. With just six points in six March games, Crosby wasn't much of a factor as the Penguins battled the likes of the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers to Atlantic Division supremacy.

Last night, Sidney finally put his stamp back on the team with a two-goal performance in the Penguins 4-2 win over the Flyers. With the win, the Pens win the division for the first time since 1998, and can finish no lower than second place in the Eastern Conference.

"We ended up losing Crosby (for 28 games) and Marc-Andre Fleury (for three months) and so many other guys during the course of the season, and we were just trying to focus and maintain our position to make the playoffs," coach Michel Therrien said. "The guys surprised me with their commitment."

Another interesting note: The Penguins sold out all 41 home games for the first time in their 41 year history. Given the team's past attendance problems, this is just more icing on the cake for the revived antarctic dwellers. Still, I find it amazing that they never sold out a season back when Mario Lemieux and the Pens were winning Stanley Cups. What the hell?

As of today, the Chicago Blackhawks are six points out of the final Western Conference playoff berth. The St. Louis Blues are also six points out ... of last place in the conference. Yet the war of words between the two teams is at playoff intensity.

In a 4-3 overtime win by the Blackhawks on Sunday, the Blues got physical with star rookies Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. This didn't sit well with Chicago coach Denis Savard, who singled out Barret Jackman and David Backes of St. Louis in his postgame diatribe:

"I'm ticked off at a bunch of their players taking shots at us, free shots," Savard said. "After whistles, taking cross-checks behind the head, behind their backs. Jackman a few times ... Backes goes after Niklas Hjalmarsson. How tough is he? We'll figure it out someday."

Jackman offered his candid rebuttal on Monday, in a rant that ended with "sorry that we hurt their feelings."

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Back at the season's midpoint, Eric Duhatscheck of the Globe and Mail made the case that Calgary's Jarome Iginla was the leading candidate for the Hart Trophy as the NHL MVP. Over the weekend, Ross McKeon over at Yahoo! tried to nail it down for the Edmonton native, saying that while both Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin have had great seasons, Iginla has demonstrated the additional intangibles that make him Hart-worthy:

Iginla is a fierce leader who is the best money player in his sport. When the game is on the line, Iginla is going to do something to help his team. He is clutch. Saturday night, for example, he scored a natural hat trick when his team was down a goal to put them ahead in a must-have home game against rival and division-leading Minnesota Wild.

[...]

Iginla is on pace for 99 points and will appear in all 82 games for the Flames as long as he doesn't miss one of the last seven. Nine of his 48 goals have been game-winners.

But Iginla's game goes beyond numbers. He's the only captain among the top three candidates. He's tough as nails, a willing combatant if he feels he needs to drop the gloves. He's engaging, inspiring, relentless, the total package.

Today marks the official rollout of the NHL's new online video deal with Hulu, the video streaming service owned by News Corp. and NBC Universal. In isolation, it's not really that big a deal, but when you combine it with the league's strategy of positioning its content on as many platforms as possible, it all starts to make a lot more sense.

After all, if the fans aren't coming to you on traditional platforms in the numbers you're looking for, it's time to get ahead of the parade and position yourself where those eyeballs might be headed next.

But while the league might be highlighting the "free-on-demand hockey content, including full-length games from the current 2007-08 season, classic games and "Best of the Week" highlights and all access features," I decided to poke around Hulu to find some hockey related content that wasn't produced by the league. And while I didn't find much, what I did trip over was actually pretty funny.

The NHL and discipline czar Colin Campbell had a busy day yesterday with a trio of suspensions: Dallas's Steve Ott (three games) for a blow to the head of Colorado Avalanche defenseman Jordan Leopold; Buffalo's Andrew Peters (one game) for battling New York Rangers winger Colton Orr at the end of the third period; and Chicago's James Wisniewski (one game), for a cross-check to the neck of Detroit's Mikael Samuelsson. Peters and the Wis served their penalties last night.

The Wisniewski suspension bugs the hell out of me. I couldn't find video of the incident online, but I watched the highlight and one game is, quite frankly, a joke. Even if you believe Samuelsson provoked Wisniewski (definitely) or embellished the cross-check (probably), it doesn't change the fact that Wisniewski knowingly smacked an opponent near the head with his stick -- if Samuelsson had been injured, this would have been Jesse Boulerice Part Deux.

So why did he get just one game? The standards, practices and politics of suspensions for the NHL are a state secret according to Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News, who writes that the League does "not discuss suspensions or the process involved in reviewing them." And he believes that the behind-closed-doors manner of dishing out discipline needs to come to an end.

Question: Who leads the Chicago Blackhawks in goal scoring and ranks 9th in the league with 33 goals?

Patrick Kane? Jonathan Toews? Martin Havlat? Robert Lang?

Nope. It's Patrick Sharp, the once-forgotten Philadelphia Flyers prospect that has quietly developed into one of the league's more dangerous snipers. The likes of Vincent Lecavalier, Dany Heatley, and Olli Jokinen are all eating this guy's goal-scoring ice dust.

One of the bigger reasons for Chi-Town's resurgence has been the fine and underrated play of this small sniper. Sharp, together with Rene Bourque, has given the Blackhawks the most dangerous shorthanded units in the entire NHL. Sharp leads the league (tied with Daniel Alfredsson) with seven shorthanded goals, and the Hawks lead the entire NHL with 14 goals while a man or two sits in the sin bin.

YEAR	CLUB	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-
03-04	PHI	41	5	2	7	-3
05-06	PHI/CHI	72	14	17	31	+5
06-07	CHI	80	20	15	35	-15
07-08	CHI	65	33	18	51	+18

It's been quite a steady rise for Sharp, and Philly's 'brain trust' must be kicking themselves for giving up a solid 2-way player for a minor leaguer who won't amount to anything useful to the Flyers.

Fantasy Leaguers: It's rarely smart to bank on somebody who gets a huge amount of their offense from shorthanded goals, as that offense is never steady from year to year. That said, Sharp should be good for 25-30 goals per season from here on out. Make sure you pilfer him from under the noses of your rival GMs.

When the Chicago Blackhawks drafted Tuomo Ruutu 9th overall in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft, they figured they were getting a franchise Power Forward in the mold of Keith Tkachuk.

Over six years later, the Blackhawks have apparently have ran out of patience, and are sick of waiting for Tuomo's offensive potential to blossom. With just 21 points this season, and just 38 points last season, Tuomo was looking to be just a regular grinder/pest like his brother, Jarkko.

In a swap of slowly-developing forwards, the Hawks sent Ruutu to the Carolina Hurricanes for Andrew Ladd, another first-round draft pick (2004, 4th overall) with size, skill, and a lack of production to date.

I'll give this swap one lone Milbury. I feel that Ruutu has more potential, but both players clearly needed a chance of scenery. Remember how long both Todd Bertuzzi and Olli Jokinen took to reach their full potential? It's likely that one, or both, players will reach that potential a few years down the road. As of now, it's a fairly even trade.

Remember those days following the Winter Classic, when the greatest wave of positive P.R. hockey has seen since Mario returned from cancer was cresting? When everyone wanted to know who and where was next: Penguins and Flyers in Happy Valley? Hockey on the Frozen Tundra? Any combination of the New York teams at Yankee Stadium? In hindsight, the NHL actually made a shrewd decision in choosing not to rush its commitment to future installments of the Winter Classic, using the All-Star Game to announce the next slate of European games and keeping its options open for New Year's Day 2009 and beyond.

Meanwhile, the idea of outdoor hockey continues to be a topic of conversation in NHL cities. Like in Chicago, where there's a full-on hockey revival occurring. According to the Sun-Times, a recent municipal government decision could kick-start a potential week-long hockey festival at Soldier Field that would include a Blackhawks' game:

A Chicago Park District panel recommends that a new contract to manage Soldier Field go to SMG, which made a pitch of hosting an outdoor Blackhawks hockey game at the lakefront stadium. "I know SMG and the Blackhawks have been talking about trying to do an outdoor game," said Park District Supt. Timothy Mitchell. "I know the Hawks are interested and they're going to work with the NHL to see if that's something we can do in the near future."

Mitchell said the district would like the hockey plan to include a college contest and a way to allow people to use the rink for pleasure skating in a week-long event. "We think there would be a great interest in citizens skating inside Soldier Field between the colonnades," said Mitchell.

Blackhawks president John McDonough downplayed the urgency of the talks with SMG, calling them "informal" and "on a what-if basis." (He was also careful to bring Wrigley and U.S. Cellular fields into the discussion as well.) But as Kenn.com points out, it's a credit to McDonough that this discussion is even happening -- out of the box thinking and imaginative promotion weren't exactly the late Dollar Bill's bag, baby.