Starting Five

1. Chi-Normous

The Blackhawks ground the Lightning 2-0 in Game 6 to claim the Stanley Cup, their third of the past six years. An Original Six team hoists the trophy, the realm is saved.

2. Living In The Limelight

After 41 years as a highly popular prog rock band (with an intensely loyal following), the Canadian trio Rush at last make the cover of the Rolling Stone. There’s (the scantest) hope for you yet, Journey.

I wonder whether this speech at the long-overdue Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction two years ago, an entity whose strings are pulled by RS founder Jann Wenner, had anything to do with it. Or whether Jann realized it may finally be time to appeal to his mag’s aging demo.

3. Take, Take Me Home

(to Africa)

The stunt promos keep coming. Last week on the date of the release of Orange is the New Black on Netflix, the Rachel Dolezal kerfuffle broke out. This past weekend, as Jura$$ic World opened globally, a flood in the country of Georgia led to the mass escape of animals from the zoo in Tbiliisi.

Fleas fled. Lambs are on the lam. Governor Andrew Cuomo felt compelled to tell the public that “the animals could be next door or they could be in Mexico.”

Honestly, though, it’s an awful situation, as a prized white lion was shot in the head for no good reason and six wolves were also exterminated. One zoo worker, Guliko Chitadze, who only last month lost an arm in an attack by a tiger, perished in the flood. Side note: It’s difficult to swim with one arm.

4. Dipsea Doodle

The Dipsea a 7.2-mile running race that began in 1905 in the hills north of San Francisco  and is the oldest trail-running race in America, was won on Sunday by 58 year-old Brian Pilcher. A former winner of the race in 2009, Pilcher did not have the fastest time, but the race is staggered so that the very old and very young are given incremental head starts based on their ages. This is, after all, a liberal bastion of the USA.

Pitcher, from nearby Ross, Calif., started with nearly an 11-minute head start ahead of the fastert runners, which is about a 2-mile head start for men of that pace.

5. Wherefore Whitlock?

On Friday afternoon ESPN made it two-for-two this spring on deposing editors-in-chief of its spawned Los Angeles-based sites, announcing that Jason Whitlock would not be in any way involved with The Undefeated, a black-centric site (that is yet to launch) that was tailor-made for him.

Ooooookay. So now ESPN is simply spending a lot of money on a man who alienates people wherever he goes and suffers from a grave condition of megalomania. What next? Whitlock is intelligent; his problem is that he’s keenly unaware of the fact that others are, too. Doctors refer to is at Mariotti Syndrome.

This pummeling in Deadspin a month or so back didn’t help….

Music 101

Bad Reputation

Suddenly I’m on the street/Seven years disappeared below my feet

Not the Joan Jett version — this is early ’90s troubadour Freedy Johnston. It appears at the end at the end of long-forgotten gem of a film from that era called Kicking and Screaming, which is so much better than the Will Ferrell film of the same title.

Remote Patrol 

Game 6: Dubs at Cavs

ABC 9 p.m.

Do us this one solid, John Skipper: Whenever the series ends, either tonight or Friday, bring Bill Simmons onto the set and allow him to say, “Can I talk now? It’s been like, five and a half weeks!”