It's Shaping Up to be a Big Sports Week In & Around the Sloop

It was an exciting weekend for Chicago sports, but this upcoming week should prove even more entertaining.  The Blackhawks will open the 2nd round of the Stanley Cup playoffs later this week against the Minnesota Wild.  The Bulls seem destined for a major collision with LeBron and his Cavaliers.  Our baseball teams on the North and South sides are still alive in their respective divisions (albeit that's not a very big accomplishment normally, but given the past couple years IT IS!).

But maybe the most exciting unique thing going on this week is that the NFL draft is in Chicago and will finally start this week at Congress and Michigan for three days of football fun (and some major traffic inconveniences)!

If you are a football fan, it should be a pretty interesting event to witness.  You do need tickets for entrance into the actual NFL Draft at the Auditorium Theater (Congress and Wabash), but what you don't need tickets for is pretty much everything else.

New to the draft this year and one of Chicago's main selling points to the NFL is "Draft Town", which will consists of numerous NFL themed things to do (graphic via Chicago Tribune):

Activities at Draft Town will take place on:

• Thursday, April 30: 4PM - 10PM 
• Friday, May 1: 4PM - 10PM 
• Saturday, May 2: 10AM - 7PM

The festivities will also apparently end on Saturday with a free concert at Draft Town by Phillip Phillips.  While he is a talented (yet relatively bland) artist, he did shoot part of a music video in the Sloop - so we automatically give him the benefit of the doubt.

There are a lot of resources and news outlets covering the draft, but in terms of a guide (run down of events, street closures, permitted items, etc), the Chicago Tribune has the best overview we've seen.  You can click here for that info.

Anyway, should be a great sports weekend in and around the Sloop if you're into that type of thing.

(Hat tip:  JP!)