Tens of thousands cheer during Penguins' Stanley Cup parade
PITTSBURGH — Just call it the city of champions.
Four months after celebrating the Steelers' Super Bowl victory, tens of thousands of people converged on downtown again today for a parade, this time in honor of the Stanley Cup champion Penguins. People lined city streets — in some places standing 20 deep or crowding onto multilevel parking garages — to get a glimpse of the team and the cup.
The Penguins won their third Stanley Cup Friday in a 2-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings. The parade followed the same route that drew an estimated 300,000 fans to the city after the Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII.
Chanting "Let's go Pens," fans honked plastic horns and cheered along the route. Team captain Sydney Crosby held the cup high in the air as he rode in the back of a truck alongside goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.
"Thank you guys," Crosby told the crowd at the end of the parade. "What can I say? I mean the support you guys have given us, the support you have showed ... You deserve to be called the city of champions. You deserve the Stanley Cup."
Betti Labbe, 40, and her husband Joe Szekeres, 44, both of Frederick, Md., drove to Pittsburgh Sunday night and stayed overnight with family. Szekeres is a lifelong Penguins fan who typically comes to about five games a year — but his wife needed a little more coaxing.
"This is the first year I've gotten into it this much," Labbe said. "It was them or divorce, so I picked the Penguins."