More on the Ice Girls

Boy, it looks like there's going to be lots of pixels spilled over this Ice Girls story before we finally get to the bottom of things. To start, the photo you see to the right was taken on Tuesday night on Long Island, as the refs, Henrik Lunqvist and Sean Avery discussed the situation. Meanwhile, the folks at Newsday who broke the story are leveraging their blogs covering both the Islanders and the Rangers to follow the story.

Yesterday afternoon, Islanders beat writer Greg Logan kicked things off at his Islanders blog with a blanket request that any fan who witnessed the incident involving Henrik Lundqvist and the Ice Girls send an email to one of his colleagues covering the story.

On the same pages, Rangers beat writer Steve Zipay wasn't taking things too seriously, but paused to ask if the Ice Girls should even be on the rink in the first place:

[I]t raises the question of why trios of bare-midriffed young ladies are swirling around to perform a job efficiently handled without fanfare by rink personnel in many arenas. Yes, at some arenas and at the Coliseum, male fans ogle the girls in what passes for "entertainment" during TV timeouts. Confession: I'm usually typing during timeouts so I don't even notice. So I'll ask: Should the "Ice girls" even be dressed up and shoved out for display in the lion's den?

An interesting question, and one that I know that ownership in Washington has been grappling with. Currently, the Caps use kids from local youth hockey teams for on-ice clean up. In a later post, Zipay took pains to point out that Lundqvist has a very good reputation on the Rangers beat, and isn't known as somebody who tries to take the reporters for a ride.

UPDATE: Knowing a good story when they see it, Newsday has compiled a photo gallery of Ice Girls in action, including a number of incriminating shots from Tuesday night's game.