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Q: What can the NHL do to capitalize on the momentum gained from the Olympics?

Dave Lapic, Washington, D.C.

MOLINARI: Not necessarily much of anything.

Yes, the broadcast of the gold-medal game between the U.S. and Canada Sunday attracted a staggering number of viewers in this country and the tournament, in general, featured some terrific competition, but there's a major difference between a two-week tournament where every storyline is laced with nationalism and an 82-game regular season that plays out over six-plus months.

The thinking here is that there were an awful lot of people in Alabama and Nebraska and New Mexico who were utterly immersed in the gold-medal game, but who won't even think about spending a few hours this Sunday watching Detroit and Chicago play on NBC.

The Olympics are a unique event, with an appeal that transcends that of any other competition. There were, for example, stories about people on Wall Street who got completely caught up in the curling competition during the Games. How many of those folks do you think will spend the coming weekend tracking down a bonspiel to watch?

Three undoubtedly will be some casual fans who were so smitten by what they saw of the hockey in Vancouver that they'll pay a little more attention to the game, but it's hard to imagine that these Olympics (or any other) will spark enduring interest in regions where hockey was, at best, an afterthought a month ago.

Q: Tell me I was hearing things, that there weren't actually boos for Sidney Crosby during the Olympics introduction at the beginning of the game (Tuesday). What a joke. OK, don't cheer, but how do you boo? This guy has done nothing but worked his butt off for Pittsburgh, the Penguins and himself. Led a team to a Stanley Cup as the youngest captain ever. That booing should (result in) an immediate removal from the arena for an idiotic move like that.

Clint Rauscher, Cambridge Springs, Pa.

MOLINARI: Tossing people out of the arena for booing Crosby obviously would have been way, way, way over the top, but the reaction of some people in the crowd -- whether they were jeering Crosby himself or just the replay of his Olympics-clinching goal being shown on the arena scoreboard -- really was unnecessary. And, in a lot of ways, disappointing.

As you noted, if fans didn't want to applaud Crosby's achievement, that was their right, but they could have simply sat out their hands. Or, better yet, stuffed them into their mouths.

And people shouldn't blame the Penguins for this. What were they supposed to do, ignore one of the great moments in the career of the guy who is the cornerstone of their franchise and the driving force behind the revival that produced a Stanley Cup in just his fourth year in the league? Should they only have acknowledged those players who played for the U.S. at the Games, because that's the team that the vast majority of their fans wanted to finish first?

The Mellon Arena crowd did itself proud by the way it put aside normal rooting interests and applauded Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller, who was so brilliant in leading Team USA to the silver medal. Some of those same fans, however, did a complete reversal when they jeered Crosby and/or the replay a few seconds later.

It's completely understandable that U.S. fans didn't want Canada to win the gold-medal game, regardless of whether Crosby got the goal that decided it or not. But booing him two days after the fact wasn't going to change the outcome, and even if they didn't want to celebrate what he did, it shouldn't have been too much to expect that they not do anything to detract from it.

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