General

Caps-Pens Heads for Seventh Heaven

May 12, 2009, 3:28 AM UTC

Did the Washington Capitals deserve to stave off elimination for the fourth time â†µthis playoff year and force a seventh game in their second round playoff series â†µagainst the Pittsburgh Penguins? After being thoroughly dominated for three periods in every aspect of â†µthe game except on the scoreboard, maybe not. But as William Muny, the â†µmurderous cowboy played by Clint Eastwood in the classic Western Unforgiven, might say, deserves got nothing to do with â†µit. And it’s exactly what the Caps did with a 5-4 overtime win in Game 6 on Monday â†µnight.
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â†µOver the course of an improbable evening, there were four lead â†µchanges and eight different players managed to score a goal. Depending on when â†µyou managed to tune in, the identity of the night’s heroes and goats kept â†µchanging.
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â†µArrive early in the first, Milan Jurcina was your goat for â†µpinching in on a play that lead to Pittsburgh’s first goal, while your hero was â†µWashington goalie Simeon Varlamov, who withstood an 18-shot barrage while only â†µgiving up Pittsburgh’s initial goal to Bill Guerin.
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â†µIf you showed up in â†µthe second, your hero was Pittsburgh defenseman Mark Eaton, who scored a â†µgame-tying goal with less than 34 seconds left in the period. Your goat, once â†µagain, was Jurcina, who after blocking a shot, inexplicably hiked the puck â†µbetween his legs and directly onto Eaton’s stick.
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â†µFast-forward to the â†µthird period, you had your choice of heroes: early on it was Washington’s Viktor â†µKozlov, who scored his second goal of the game on a bad angle wrister from along â†µthe left-wing goal line as Pittsburgh defenseman Hal Gill got in the way of â†µgoalie Marc-Andre Fleury while the latter was backing into the crease. Or maybe â†µyou saw the last goal in regulation, as Sidney Crosby watched the puck squirt â†µout along the boards to the right wing point, then snuck behind Washington â†µdefenseman John Erskine just in time to tap in a pass from Brooks Orpik.
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â†µBut in the end, the biggest hero â†µof the night, and the one that earned the coveted hard hat from his teammates â†µwas center David Steckel, the man who had a chance to win Game 5 in Washington â†µon Saturday night in overtime, and couldn’t put the puck into an open â†µnet.
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â†µThis time, Steckel was battling with veteran defenseman Phillipe â†µBoucher in front of the Pittsburgh net when Brooks Laich launched an innocent â†µenough wrist shot from above the right wing faceoff circle. Steckel got loose â†µjust enough, that he was able to tip the puck past Fleury for the game winner. It was the third goal of the series for a checking center who only scored eight â†µtimes over the course of the regular season.
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â†µAnd so we go to Wednesday â†µnight in Washington for the most anticipated seventh game in the NHL since â†µCarolina hosted Edmonton in Game 7 of the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals. What’s in â†µstore for us? Very likely, some history, and you’ll be ashamed if you don’t â†µfind a way to watch.â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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