In the NHL the Boston Bruins face the hottest team in the league right now and an old friend when they skate against the Flames in Calgary tonight. Former Bruins defenseman Dougie Hamilton is part of the blue line corps for the team that's won ten games in a row heading and has vaulted itself into the upper regions of the playoff bubble when just a month ago they looked like a lock for a no-show.

It was the year of the Boston Red Sox Impossible Dream season. The year Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway thrilled moviegoers in the biopic "Bonnie and Clyde". The last time the Original Six Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team hoisted the Stanley Cup. And until last night at Patrick Gymnasium, 1967 was the last year the Rutland High School boy's basketball team was crowned division one state champs.

Their nail-biting win over Albany in the books, and with it their sixth America East championship, the University of Vermont men's basketball team found out yesterday they'll be facing the Purdue Boilermakers in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Some thrilling action in high school playoffs went down on Town Meeting Day, including a semi-final match-up between Rutland and Burlington in division one boys' hoops that went down to the wire and saw Rutland knocking off the defending state champs 41-38 at Patrick Gymnasium.

You can't blame fans of the University of Vermont mens' basketball team if they're already looking ahead to the Big Dance. The Catamounts and coach John Becker would surely remind those fans that they've still got work to do to get there, but after UVM's 74-41 dismantling of New Hampshire last night, the America East championship crown settling squarely in Burlington has a feel of inevitability to it.

The nation's second longest winning streak in mens' college basketball is now at seventeen games. The America East conference crown has been secured. The best regular season record for a UVM hoops team is in the books. And if any other team in America East wants to forge a path to the NCAA tournament, they're going to have to travel through Burlington to get there.

The playoffs are a few games off for some schools, but have already begun for others, including the Lyndon State Hornets, who have booked themselves a date in the North Atlantic Conference semi-finals after beating the University of Maine at Farmington, 88-66, in Lyndon Center last night.

The NBA schedule resumes after the all star break today, but the games themselves will take a back seat to trade tracking as teams buy or sell according to their playoff chances.

The U.S. Biathlon team continues to rack up wins at the World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria, and skiers with ties to Vermont keep finding their ways to the podium. Last week UVM alum Lowell Bailey became the first American ever to win a Biathlon World Championship, and yesterday Barton native Susan Dunklee took silver in the womens' 12.5-kilometer race.

A University of Vermont skiing alum has made history. Lowell Bailey, who graduated from UVM in the class of 2005, became the first American ever to win a biathlon world championship in a thrilling finish on Thursday in Hochfilzen, Austria.