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Why is Shawn Michaels thinking of going to a NHL playoff game in Pittsburgh this Sunday?

By Sean Rueter
CBS Sports on Twitter

You can say a lot of things about my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - and if you're from Ohio, the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area or even the Eastern half of PA, many of those things probably aren't nice. But you can't say we don't love our pro wrestling.

As you might expect from an area that gave the world Bruno Sammartino & Kurt Angle, the town that watched Undertaker throw Mick Foley from the top of the Cell and turned the Royal Rumble into a Daniel Bryan rally enjoys watching guys & gals beat each other up in scripted exhibitions almost as much as pro sports teams who wear black & gold.

When we find a way to combine the two? Well, sometimes it's not great. Yeah, that was us that started "WOO"ing like Naitch at baseball games. In our defense, when the local nine are in the midst of a record-setting twenty straight losing campaigns, you have to find ways to entertain yourself.

But when our National Hockey League (NHL) boys have a red-hot third line (if you don't know but do care what that is, head here) made up of Carl Hagelin, Nick Bonino & Phil Kessel, which gets noted on the score sheet as H-B-K, well...

The Penguins, Pittsburgh's hockey club, are currently in the Eastern Conference finals of the Stanley Cup tournament (the semis of the playoffs to determine the League champion), and the HBK line thing has been building for a while. Lately however, insistent 'Burgh Tweeters have gotten Shawn Michaels himself in on the fun.

With a pitch of, essentially, San Antonio, Texas (Michael's stomping grounds) doesn't have a NHL team and we're not going to stop bothering you until you buy in, the Heartbreak Kid started watching Pens' games and Tweeting along. Last night (May 18), as Kessel and Hagelin both scored in Pittsburgh's 4 - 2 win over Tampa Bay, #GetHBKToGame5 (the next game in the best of seven series set in the Pens' home rink) started trending.

The Pens organization sent out a formal invite, and Michaels was feeling the pressure. An invitation from Steelers' legend, and fellow hunting enthusiast, Brett Keisel looks like it may have pushed HBK, the wrestler, to checking out HBK, the hockey players, out in person:

But they don't call him the Showstopper for nothing, folks. Shawn is building to an announcement of whether or not he'll make the trip to Consol Energy Center this Sunday (May 22)...

No word on if this will be used as fuel for a feud between HBK and famous Tampa Bay fans like these two jabronis, or that Hogan fellow who likes to rep the Lightning:

Tune up the band.

UPDATE:

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