Time Not On Red Wings' Side In 3-OT Thriller

This Stanley Cup Finals series has suddenly become slave to the clock. The numbers we deal with aren't so much shots on goal and power play and penalty kill percentages, but those that are tied directly to some sort of timing device.

In Game 4, the magic number was 86, or 1:26 -- however you choose to look at it. As in, 86 seconds of a 5-on-3 that the Red Wings killed in the third period, helping to seal their 2-1 win.

In Game 5, first it was :35, then 4:00, then :36, then 49:57. And none of those four figures were friendly to the Red Wings, who now must drag the weight of winning the Stanley Cup to Pittsburgh to play a Game 6 less than 48 hours after a triple-OT loss in Game 5, 4-3.

:35
That was how much time, officially, was left in the third period when Maxime Talbot poked a tantalizingly loose puck past Chris Osgood, tying the game at 3. Sitting upstairs in the JLA auxiliary press box, I could literally feel the rumble begin beneath me as the time wound down and the Stanley Cup would be made public. The roar grew in girth when the puck was bounced out to center ice in the vicinity of Henrik Zetterberg, who looked poised to slide it into a yawning, empty Penguins net. That was with about a minute to go. But the puck got chucked back into the Detroit zone. And even though Talbot's goal only took a split second to occur, watching it unfold from my vantage point -- almost directly in line with the goal line to Osgood's left -- it seemed to happen in slow motion. It was one of those moments when you could see what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it from doing so. You wanted to yell to Ozzie, "LOOK! To your left! He's going to start slapping at the puck near the goal post!" It was like watching a two-year-old who's about to spill his glass of milk, but observing it from across the room, never able to get there in time.


4:00
May God strike me down, but as soon as Jiri Hudler was whistled for a four-minute high-sticking penalty, I looked at my watch and muttered to myself and my sleeping wife some 15 miles away, "Well, honey, looks like I'll be leaving the arena soon." Because as much as I adore the Red Wings' penalty killers, I knew there'd be no damn way they'd erase 240 seconds of power play time, fatigued in a third OT. I didn't even see the penalty. There was an icing, and I looked up at one of the monitors in the press area, and the camera is on Pens coach Michel Therrien, and he's holding up four fingers. Then the boos started to cascade, and I see Hudler skating to the penalty box, perhaps the loneliest man in the world at that point. Then the look to my cell phone for the time, trying to gauge when my car would be hitting the freeway. There was never any hope, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that. But I doubt I was alone.

:36
That's all it took for my fears to be confirmed. Again, it was slow motion: watching Petr Sykora receive that pass near the left face-off circle, wide open, eons to fire up his lethal wrist shot -- well, it wasn't a very good feeling. I could see traffic in front of Osgood, in the corner of my eye, and I did what I've been doing at hockey games for decades: I simply looked toward the red goal light for confirmation of what I believed was about to occur. And it flashed a bright, ugly red.

49:57
The amount of overtime put in by the Red Wings and Pens. More numbers to make you cringe: the Red Wings had 58 shots on goal, the Pens 32. So you know, that works out to be about 31 for every 60 minutes for Detroit, and less than 19 for Pittsburgh. Typical.

OK, so how did we get here? How did a game get broken down so conveniently into bite-sized increments of time?

The Red Wings came out nervous to start the game. Either that, or someone told them that their families were all being held hostage and would be harmed if any Red Wings player showed any sense of urgency. The Penguins stormed out of the gate and cobbled together a 2-0 lead before the Red Wings finally realized that, you know what, the Stanley Cup isn't just going to be given to us; we have to actually do more than flash our Red Wings crest and hope the Penguins scurry away, like cockroaches when the lights get turned on.

But the boys in red mounted a terrific comeback, and when they took that 3-2 lead and played very well with it, you were still a little scared, but also confident that the sands in the hourglass would eventually run out and so would the Penguins' season. Yet time never moves so slow, clocks never tick backward with such molasses-like speed, as when the other team's net is empty and the puck is being furiously directed toward your goal. I used to think 60 seconds were an eternity only during infomercials. But that ain't nothing compared to an assault on your goalkeeper while trying to hold on to a lead by a thread.

Overtime play was mostly the Red Wings delivering punch after punch, and let's give a shout out to Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who was outstanding. I mean, really. He was the reason there's a Game 6 tomorrow night.

But OT was also when the Red Wings had to kill off three penalties, the Pens one. The first two Detroit penalties, for goaltender interference, were suspect. Zetterberg's was maybe 50/50, but the one on Dan Cleary, whose momentum caused him to gently bump Fleury as he crashed the net during a one-man rush, was despicable. Yes, the Red Wings escaped those calls, but the penalties forced the team to expend extra energy and effort that wears on you as a player in such a grueling game.

So there'll be a Game 6. The Cup gets put back into storage, and will also make the trip to the Steel City. And still only one team can win it. But now we're just one Penguins home win away from not only bringing the Cup back to Detroit, but making it accessible to both teams. Scary, eh?