No one ever lost a puck-bucket of sleep over the arcane yet enduring fact that nobody’s won the Stanley Cup twice in a row for 19 years, yet it seemed monstrously important Thursday night, when after 25 extra minutes of delirious sudden death hockey, the Penguins roared into position to do that very thing.
No one goes around reeling off the names of the 1998 Detroit Red Wings — Yzerman, Draper, Kozlov, Lidstrom, McCarty, Shanahan … OK, almost no one — the last NHL house of royalty to actually get it done, but when the 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins kicked aside the Ottawa Senators, 3-2, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, coach Mike Sullivan’s defending Stanley Cup champions could taste something very, very special.
They’re already the first NHL team in the past 50 years to make consecutive appearances in the final on three separate occasions (1991 and ‘92, 2008 and ‘09, and now 2016 and ‘17.) Now, four wins against the fledgling Nashville Predators, nothing more and nothing less, separate this particular waddle of Penguins from a clear designation as the best hockey team in a generation.
And make no mistake, the Senators left them little choice. Fighting off two one-goal deficits, one in 20 seconds in the second period and one in less than three minutes in the third, Ottawa sent Game 7 to overtime and beyond to force every last drop of brilliance Sullivan’s team could squeeze from itself.
Finally, five minutes and nine seconds into a second sudden death overtime, Penguins veteran Chris Kunitz drove a puck over the right shoulder of fabulous Senators goaltender Craig Anderson to send the Penguins to their sixth Stanley Cup final.
Eleven different NHL franchises had their shot at back-to-back Cups over the past 18 years, but only three even managed to reach the Stanley Cup final, the last being the 2009 Red Wings, who lost in seven games to … wait for it … the Penguins.
The Senators were trying to get back to the final for the first time in 10 years, but four times since, they’ve walked the post-season plank at the insistence of the Penguins, whose record in those series is now a combined 16-6.
The opening period Thursday night was rendered as a rough, moving sketch of two teams trying really hard not to lose a hockey game, which has a very different vibe than two teams trying really hard to win one. Passes went unhandled at both ends of the pond, shots were very few, just 11, six by the Penguins. The best chance at a 1-0 lead (which is no small thing — teams who get the first goal in Game 7s win nearly 75 percent of the time) came as the period was about to expire.
Penguins defenseman Ian Cole dug the puck free near the blue line and got it to Sidney Crosby, whose wrist shot nearly whistled between the feet of Anderson, but the goalie got a pad down on it and the teams floated to their dressing rooms scoreless.
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If the skaters looked jittery, the goaltenders looked almost eerily confident. Pittsburgh’s Matt Murray came to the rink on his 23rd birthday having won all eight games in his post-season career that followed a loss. Anderson was coming off a performance in which he stopped 45 of a staggering 46 Penguins shots.
Shots and scoring chances multiplied in the middle period, and the teams traded goals 20 seconds apart, but ultimately the second period was no more pivotal than the first, except maybe to ratchet the third period tension up to 1,000, or whatever the biggest number is on the tension ratcheting scale.
In the third, the teams exchanged goals again, the Penguins surrendering their second lead of the night three minutes after going ahead 2-1. Justin Schultz put Pittsburgh ahead, but Ryan Dzingel put in a rebound he’d collected when teammate Erik Karlsson’s shot hit the post past Murray to make it 2-2.
It stayed that way.
Two weeks, seven games, and one extra period into the Eastern Conference Final, we were still nowhere but on the verge of overtime.
The overtime did nothing but suck the audience’s emotions dry.
It would take more than just one overtime. More than anyone imagined. And it would go hard toward midnight as one of the greatest hockey games ever played in Pittsburgh. Ever.
First Published: May 26, 2017, 4:41 a.m.
