OVER TIME
and beyond.
If you lived and died and screamed and cried
through four overtimes against the Caps in '96, you no doubt still feel that
same, nerve-jangling mix of elation and relief at the very mention of Petr
Nedved, and so what transpired in the blink of a beautiful wrist shot early
yesterday morning was one glorious, sweet-shooting Czech-mate of a sequel. It
was deja vu, mixed with a heaping helping of praise Jesus.
If you lived and cried and screamed and almost died after five overtimes
against the Flyers in 2000, you no doubt still feel that gut-wrenching mix of
disgust and depression at the very thoughts of Keith Primeau and Ron Tugnutt,
and so what rose from a bubbling cauldron of blood and guts and sheer,
indomitable will early yesterday morning was one glorious, karma-rewarding bit
of redemption. It was deja screw you, topped with generous scoops of
woo hoo and hallelujah and pack up that damned cup, Mike, because the boys are back in
town.
If you’re anything at all like me — and I hope, for your sakes, you’re not — you’re still catching your breath. Still shaking your head. Still stopping, at times, in the middle of whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re doing it, just to sigh and smile and revel in it just a little bit longer. You’re thinking it’s one of the best, most epic, most glorious games of hockey — or any other sport, for that matter — that you’ve ever seen. You’re thinking that you may never see, or at least feel, another one quite like it. You’re thinking it’s a story you will tell your grandchildren:
how Marc-Andre Fleury summoned the glorious spirits of Patrick Roy and Terry Sawchuck, of Jacques Plante and Ken Dryden, of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, keeping both his cool and his smile, contorting his wildly bendable, defiantly unbreakable body and refusing to let anything, from slap shots to caroming pucks to crease-crashing forwards, get by him, blocking and sticking and gloving and jaw-dropping left-pad saving everything that came his way, with an acrobatic, rubber-limbed, iron-willed gem of a performance;
how Ryan Malone took a slap shot to the face, gushed blood, left the ice with his second broken nose of the series, and then came back for four more periods, bruised and swollen and cotton-stuffed, almost unrecognizable except for his bushy beard and his iron will, breathing through his mouth and playing through his soul, scrapping and hitting and blocking shots, casting aside fear and pain and what must have been a fire raging in his lungs to steel himself in front of that crease again, watching one last laser of a shot sail past his battered face and into the back of that beautiful twine;
how Mad Max Talbot, who was never out there in those situations but could have been, and probably should have been sometimes, was, and did what he always does -- work like a dog, chase down the puck, take a hit, find some space, crash the net -- and, with thirty-four-point-three blessed seconds left in the season, took a second whack at a rebound and jammed it home to save the day, the night, the next two days, and the last nine months, pulling his team back from the edge of the abyss and then, through two-and-a-half more periods, convincing them to stay there, with fabulous work on the ice and even more fabulous work off it, laughing and joking and even dancing on the bench, keeping his teammates’ minds and spirits off the exhaustion, the deprivation, the desperation that must have threatened to overtake them at any frail, fragile moment;
how Adam Hall, a guy almost everyone had forgotten but who came back from injury and worked his way into the lineup and, after already emerging as one of the unsung heroes of the series, unsang again, not just with the second goal of the game, but with seven periods of relentless energy, with brilliant defense and unflappable penalty killing, turning aside rush after rush and puck after puck, passing and poking and chipping and prodding that little biscuit out of the defensive oven and back those few, precious inches to neutral ice, ever and onward toward Game 6;
how Marian Hossa proved once more, and for all-time, that anyone who ever said he couldn’t perform in the playoffs should have never, ever been allowed to opine on the sport again, scoring the all-important first goal of the game with a typically blinding flash of his soft, ferocious hands, turning backhand to forehand and whipping a rocket of a wrister past Chris Osgood and then, for a hundred more minutes, willing his body up and down and all over the ice, launching twice as many shots as anyone else on his team, backchecking as well and and as diligently as he forechecked, exhibiting a drive and a passion that, though evident in every strong and graceful push of his skates, you remember best and most in the look on his face, part joy and part deliverance, when, after helping mob Max near the end of regulation, he looked to the heavens and finally exhaled;
how Jarrko Ruutu, who probably should have played more in the series and especially in the game before then, came over the boards time and again in the OTs, providing a shot of adrenaline and a chaser of grit and guts that inspired his teammates and, at least in little doses, gave hope to everyone watching at home, if not for the promise of fresh legs, then for that grand and glorious shift with Geno and Petr in the first OT, and for that heart-stopping, nearly heart-breaking moment in the second when his shot flew over Osgood’s glove but clanged off the (just-too-)far post;
how Pascal DuPuis and Tyler Kennedy and Gary Roberts rocked 'em and socked 'em and kept on keeping on, delivering valuable minutes and invaluable moments, keeping that puck moving, that team pulsing, that hope surviving;
how Sidney Crosby, surely a Kid no more, rang up 34:37 of ice time, the most of any forward on the team, spreading his wildfire tempo and hellfire will all over the ice for six periods, leading, as he always did, by tireless, ferocious example, ringing up two assists, racing for every loose puck, and, at least twice late in the overtimes, giving up his body and everything else to slide across the ice, deep in the defensive zone, to block a Red Wings’ slap shot and keep his teammates, who were standing atop his shoulders just as surely as he stood atop his goalie’s, playing on;
how Jordan Staal was just so damned good in every zone, rushing and skating and swooping, working that big frame and that even bigger big reach, his stick and his body always in passing lines, cutting off time and sealing off space, killing penalties -- as always -- with the smarts and composure of a player twice his age, then using that youth to his advantage in the fifth and sixth periods, churning those young legs, winning races and battles in all four corners, almost always matched up against the Wings’ best scorers and preventing them, time and again, from getting a clean look at the net;
how Evgeni Malkin, a league MVP candidate and the single biggest reason the Pens made the playoffs that year, exorcised some demons and maybe silenced at least a few of the fair-weather, instant gratification fans who’d lately turned on him, coming to life in the overtimes, working and battling until he’d collapsed from complete exhaustion at the end of a long shift in the first OT, accounting for the Pens’ two best scoring chances in that frame, and then a few more in the second, making some more mistakes, yes, but also backchecking with abandon and breaking up plays in his own zone time and time again, extending the game and buying some time until that last glorious chance, when he corralled the puck behind the net and slipped a perfect pass on to Petr Sykora’s tape, the second-to-last Pen to touch the puck before the glorious eruption;
how Petr Sykora, who had not played a great game but battled through it anyway, and who was playing the series almost certainly injured, took that pass from Geno and unleashed one of his typical, fluid, how-did-he-shoot-that-already? wristers over the sprawling body of Henrik Zetterberg, over the spasming shoulder of Chris Osgood, and into the dream of a Game 6 that waited, ever so patiently, just behind that gorgeous goal line — but not before telling his teammates, and even that annoying little snapping turtle of a Pierre Maguire between the benches, that he was going to do it, entering the rarefied realm of delivered-upon sporting predictions somewhere just south of Babe Ruth and Joe Namath, and perhaps just north of Kevin Stevens;
how Sergei Gonchar, a guy once thought soft by much of the league and still not thought of as what he was — one of the best defensemen in the league for at least a half-dozen years — did not play for more than three periods after giving up his body once more to pressure a second period shot that, were it not already remembered for Fleur’s physics- and physiology-defying save, would have been remembered for his outrageous effort, and for his headlong, bone-and-cartilage-crushing collision into the boards, came back in the third overtime and sat on the end of the bench, waiting for a penalty call that finally came, and that sent him, heart on his sleeve and courage in the air, back over the boards to glide that puck up the ice and atop the umbrella, from stick to stick and back again, setting up, with typical grace and precision, the shot that led to the rebound that led to the pass that led to the game-winning goal;
how Hal Gill and Rob Scuderi and Brooks Orpik and Darryl Sydor, in the absence of Gonch and in what sometimes felt like the absence of all hope, hit and worked and dived and skated and sprawled and crawled their way to loose pucks, clearing the crease and crowding the corners, standing tall and proud on skates upon which they would have been forgiven for not being able to stand at all, four gutty, gutsy defenders who gave heart and soul and shin, hands and legs and finally one beautiful, bloody chin, for a cause they would not dare surrender;
how Ryan Whitney, after a season of some inconsistency and far more than his share of abuse from the team’s often fickle (and uninformed) fandom, rose fiercely and brilliantly to the occasion, logging 50:46 of ice time — that was 5:22 more than the great Nick Lidstrom, and 7:04 more than Rob Scuderi, the next closest Penguin — and making it almost possible for fans and announcers alike to forget that his team played the last four periods with only one defenseman, going over the boards again and again (and again and again), on the ice every other shift, sometimes double-shifting, playing great, smart, positional D, riding guys to the outside, poking pucks off their sticks, making crisp breakout passes, always making the safe, sure play to get the puck out of the zone, meshing seamlessly with four different partners across three exhausting OTs, not getting a point and not making a big hit, and so barely mentioned in the aftermath of the game, but eating minutes and protecting the net and never, ever tiring in, absent the goalies, what was the most physically demanding role of the game, all-the-while firing three shots on goal, finishing with a +2, and ending the game on the ice, atop the umbrella with Gonch and Sykora, making one of the heady plays and great passes that lead to the winning goal, and producing, perhaps, the defining, upward-surging moment of his sure-to-be storied career;
how, when Max scored, you leapt off the sofa and ran around the room and screamed at the tops of your already laboring lungs, then ran back to the sofa to high-five and hug their Dad (or their uncle), and then to the love seat to hug and kiss their Grandma, and then, three periods, three intermissions, a couple of phone calls, and a second snack of milk and cookies later, after all those almosts and near misses, all those oh my gods and holy hells, when sweet Petr Sykora finally scored, you leapt to your feet again, and screamed, though you were not sure how much was actually left to come out, and clapped, though your hands were almost beaten and worried raw, and you felt like you could cry, and you knew you just might, so you leaped, headlong, back onto the sofa, atop their Dad (or their Uncle), to hug him and kiss him, because, even at 14 and starting to become more self-conscious about such things, the joy and the memory of the moment demanded it — and, anyway, it’s impossible to be self-conscious when a game of hockey, even one played by such inspiring young men, has reduced you to blubbering — and then, when you’d finally broken free from that delirious embrace so many hours and chills and thrills in the making, up and over again, to the love seat once more, to kiss and hug and rejoice with their Grandma, whose work ethic and spirit and fierce determination would have made her one hell of a Penguin, and who you have not seen this hockey-happy since the Penguins last won the Cup, when you were both as young as some of these kids you root for now, before you had kids of your own or dreams of grandkids to whom, one day, you could tell all of this, and maybe even do it justice, all this raw and silly and perfectly wonderful swelling of emotion that occurs when a team, a town, a family gives of itself and to each other, trading passion for joy and joy for a lifetime of memory;
and how, finally, just as you’d hoped when you’d seen it and felt it and written it all down the first time, there was still a whole lot more to the story...
(LET’S GO, PENS!)
If you’re anything at all like me — and I hope, for your sakes, you’re not — you’re still catching your breath. Still shaking your head. Still stopping, at times, in the middle of whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re doing it, just to sigh and smile and revel in it just a little bit longer. You’re thinking it’s one of the best, most epic, most glorious games of hockey — or any other sport, for that matter — that you’ve ever seen. You’re thinking that you may never see, or at least feel, another one quite like it. You’re thinking it’s a story you will tell your grandchildren:
how Marc-Andre Fleury summoned the glorious spirits of Patrick Roy and Terry Sawchuck, of Jacques Plante and Ken Dryden, of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, keeping both his cool and his smile, contorting his wildly bendable, defiantly unbreakable body and refusing to let anything, from slap shots to caroming pucks to crease-crashing forwards, get by him, blocking and sticking and gloving and jaw-dropping left-pad saving everything that came his way, with an acrobatic, rubber-limbed, iron-willed gem of a performance;
how Ryan Malone took a slap shot to the face, gushed blood, left the ice with his second broken nose of the series, and then came back for four more periods, bruised and swollen and cotton-stuffed, almost unrecognizable except for his bushy beard and his iron will, breathing through his mouth and playing through his soul, scrapping and hitting and blocking shots, casting aside fear and pain and what must have been a fire raging in his lungs to steel himself in front of that crease again, watching one last laser of a shot sail past his battered face and into the back of that beautiful twine;
how Mad Max Talbot, who was never out there in those situations but could have been, and probably should have been sometimes, was, and did what he always does -- work like a dog, chase down the puck, take a hit, find some space, crash the net -- and, with thirty-four-point-three blessed seconds left in the season, took a second whack at a rebound and jammed it home to save the day, the night, the next two days, and the last nine months, pulling his team back from the edge of the abyss and then, through two-and-a-half more periods, convincing them to stay there, with fabulous work on the ice and even more fabulous work off it, laughing and joking and even dancing on the bench, keeping his teammates’ minds and spirits off the exhaustion, the deprivation, the desperation that must have threatened to overtake them at any frail, fragile moment;
how Adam Hall, a guy almost everyone had forgotten but who came back from injury and worked his way into the lineup and, after already emerging as one of the unsung heroes of the series, unsang again, not just with the second goal of the game, but with seven periods of relentless energy, with brilliant defense and unflappable penalty killing, turning aside rush after rush and puck after puck, passing and poking and chipping and prodding that little biscuit out of the defensive oven and back those few, precious inches to neutral ice, ever and onward toward Game 6;
how Marian Hossa proved once more, and for all-time, that anyone who ever said he couldn’t perform in the playoffs should have never, ever been allowed to opine on the sport again, scoring the all-important first goal of the game with a typically blinding flash of his soft, ferocious hands, turning backhand to forehand and whipping a rocket of a wrister past Chris Osgood and then, for a hundred more minutes, willing his body up and down and all over the ice, launching twice as many shots as anyone else on his team, backchecking as well and and as diligently as he forechecked, exhibiting a drive and a passion that, though evident in every strong and graceful push of his skates, you remember best and most in the look on his face, part joy and part deliverance, when, after helping mob Max near the end of regulation, he looked to the heavens and finally exhaled;
how Jarrko Ruutu, who probably should have played more in the series and especially in the game before then, came over the boards time and again in the OTs, providing a shot of adrenaline and a chaser of grit and guts that inspired his teammates and, at least in little doses, gave hope to everyone watching at home, if not for the promise of fresh legs, then for that grand and glorious shift with Geno and Petr in the first OT, and for that heart-stopping, nearly heart-breaking moment in the second when his shot flew over Osgood’s glove but clanged off the (just-too-)far post;
how Pascal DuPuis and Tyler Kennedy and Gary Roberts rocked 'em and socked 'em and kept on keeping on, delivering valuable minutes and invaluable moments, keeping that puck moving, that team pulsing, that hope surviving;
how Sidney Crosby, surely a Kid no more, rang up 34:37 of ice time, the most of any forward on the team, spreading his wildfire tempo and hellfire will all over the ice for six periods, leading, as he always did, by tireless, ferocious example, ringing up two assists, racing for every loose puck, and, at least twice late in the overtimes, giving up his body and everything else to slide across the ice, deep in the defensive zone, to block a Red Wings’ slap shot and keep his teammates, who were standing atop his shoulders just as surely as he stood atop his goalie’s, playing on;
how Jordan Staal was just so damned good in every zone, rushing and skating and swooping, working that big frame and that even bigger big reach, his stick and his body always in passing lines, cutting off time and sealing off space, killing penalties -- as always -- with the smarts and composure of a player twice his age, then using that youth to his advantage in the fifth and sixth periods, churning those young legs, winning races and battles in all four corners, almost always matched up against the Wings’ best scorers and preventing them, time and again, from getting a clean look at the net;
how Evgeni Malkin, a league MVP candidate and the single biggest reason the Pens made the playoffs that year, exorcised some demons and maybe silenced at least a few of the fair-weather, instant gratification fans who’d lately turned on him, coming to life in the overtimes, working and battling until he’d collapsed from complete exhaustion at the end of a long shift in the first OT, accounting for the Pens’ two best scoring chances in that frame, and then a few more in the second, making some more mistakes, yes, but also backchecking with abandon and breaking up plays in his own zone time and time again, extending the game and buying some time until that last glorious chance, when he corralled the puck behind the net and slipped a perfect pass on to Petr Sykora’s tape, the second-to-last Pen to touch the puck before the glorious eruption;
how Petr Sykora, who had not played a great game but battled through it anyway, and who was playing the series almost certainly injured, took that pass from Geno and unleashed one of his typical, fluid, how-did-he-shoot-that-already? wristers over the sprawling body of Henrik Zetterberg, over the spasming shoulder of Chris Osgood, and into the dream of a Game 6 that waited, ever so patiently, just behind that gorgeous goal line — but not before telling his teammates, and even that annoying little snapping turtle of a Pierre Maguire between the benches, that he was going to do it, entering the rarefied realm of delivered-upon sporting predictions somewhere just south of Babe Ruth and Joe Namath, and perhaps just north of Kevin Stevens;
how Sergei Gonchar, a guy once thought soft by much of the league and still not thought of as what he was — one of the best defensemen in the league for at least a half-dozen years — did not play for more than three periods after giving up his body once more to pressure a second period shot that, were it not already remembered for Fleur’s physics- and physiology-defying save, would have been remembered for his outrageous effort, and for his headlong, bone-and-cartilage-crushing collision into the boards, came back in the third overtime and sat on the end of the bench, waiting for a penalty call that finally came, and that sent him, heart on his sleeve and courage in the air, back over the boards to glide that puck up the ice and atop the umbrella, from stick to stick and back again, setting up, with typical grace and precision, the shot that led to the rebound that led to the pass that led to the game-winning goal;
how Hal Gill and Rob Scuderi and Brooks Orpik and Darryl Sydor, in the absence of Gonch and in what sometimes felt like the absence of all hope, hit and worked and dived and skated and sprawled and crawled their way to loose pucks, clearing the crease and crowding the corners, standing tall and proud on skates upon which they would have been forgiven for not being able to stand at all, four gutty, gutsy defenders who gave heart and soul and shin, hands and legs and finally one beautiful, bloody chin, for a cause they would not dare surrender;
how Ryan Whitney, after a season of some inconsistency and far more than his share of abuse from the team’s often fickle (and uninformed) fandom, rose fiercely and brilliantly to the occasion, logging 50:46 of ice time — that was 5:22 more than the great Nick Lidstrom, and 7:04 more than Rob Scuderi, the next closest Penguin — and making it almost possible for fans and announcers alike to forget that his team played the last four periods with only one defenseman, going over the boards again and again (and again and again), on the ice every other shift, sometimes double-shifting, playing great, smart, positional D, riding guys to the outside, poking pucks off their sticks, making crisp breakout passes, always making the safe, sure play to get the puck out of the zone, meshing seamlessly with four different partners across three exhausting OTs, not getting a point and not making a big hit, and so barely mentioned in the aftermath of the game, but eating minutes and protecting the net and never, ever tiring in, absent the goalies, what was the most physically demanding role of the game, all-the-while firing three shots on goal, finishing with a +2, and ending the game on the ice, atop the umbrella with Gonch and Sykora, making one of the heady plays and great passes that lead to the winning goal, and producing, perhaps, the defining, upward-surging moment of his sure-to-be storied career;
how, when Max scored, you leapt off the sofa and ran around the room and screamed at the tops of your already laboring lungs, then ran back to the sofa to high-five and hug their Dad (or their uncle), and then to the love seat to hug and kiss their Grandma, and then, three periods, three intermissions, a couple of phone calls, and a second snack of milk and cookies later, after all those almosts and near misses, all those oh my gods and holy hells, when sweet Petr Sykora finally scored, you leapt to your feet again, and screamed, though you were not sure how much was actually left to come out, and clapped, though your hands were almost beaten and worried raw, and you felt like you could cry, and you knew you just might, so you leaped, headlong, back onto the sofa, atop their Dad (or their Uncle), to hug him and kiss him, because, even at 14 and starting to become more self-conscious about such things, the joy and the memory of the moment demanded it — and, anyway, it’s impossible to be self-conscious when a game of hockey, even one played by such inspiring young men, has reduced you to blubbering — and then, when you’d finally broken free from that delirious embrace so many hours and chills and thrills in the making, up and over again, to the love seat once more, to kiss and hug and rejoice with their Grandma, whose work ethic and spirit and fierce determination would have made her one hell of a Penguin, and who you have not seen this hockey-happy since the Penguins last won the Cup, when you were both as young as some of these kids you root for now, before you had kids of your own or dreams of grandkids to whom, one day, you could tell all of this, and maybe even do it justice, all this raw and silly and perfectly wonderful swelling of emotion that occurs when a team, a town, a family gives of itself and to each other, trading passion for joy and joy for a lifetime of memory;
and how, finally, just as you’d hoped when you’d seen it and felt it and written it all down the first time, there was still a whole lot more to the story...
(LET’S GO, PENS!)
Posted: Wed - June 4, 2008 at 11:57 AM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM