Stanley Cup Gear Ready For Both Red Wings, Pens

Start the presses! The day after the Pittsburgh Penguins beat Detroit to force Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals, a couple hundred championship T-shirts with their logo and colors were made to go along with ones already produced for the Red Wings.

Pittsburgh's victory on Tuesday night at home forced Detroit to keep its T-shirts in a box and bottles of champagne on ice.

What happens to the T-shirts made for the team that loses Friday night?

"The customers have to sign a waiver that they'll send them back or destroy them," said John Wangler, who owns the Michigan-based company Top Cat Sales that distributed licensed products for Reebok. "If they send them back, and teams usually do, we end up sending them to a third-world country."

Earlier this week, in a firewall breach, dozens of Red Wings 2009 Stanley Cup Champion merchandise went on sale on the NHL's Web site. Everything from garden gnomes to mouse pads to bobble heads were made available to fans.

SLIDESHOW: Photos Of Premature NHL '09 Stanley Cup Winner Gear

Wangler, a star quarterback at Michigan three decades ago, said his company will have at least 30,000 Stanley Cup championship T-shirts available for sale by Saturday.

"We make the call on when to start the presses, but sometimes we have to wait until the game is over," Wangler said. "In the last Super Bowl when the Steelers had a big lead, we started the presses. When Arizona rallied, we stopped them. Then, we fired them back up."

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