Filed under: General NHL, Rangers, Flyers, Penguins, Wings, Stars, Sharks, NHL Videos, Stanley Cup
If you're feeling a little bleary-eyed this morning, you're excused.
How else could anyone East
West of the Rockies who watched
the Stars prevail over the Sharks, 2-1 in four overtime periods, feel after enduring five hours and 14 minutes of nerve-wracking action -- a game, that by the time it was over, made you almost completely forget the thrilling OT game that allowed the Penguins to finally dispatch the Rangers late on Sunday afternoon?
I know most hockey fans tend to think of a Game Seven as the ultimate nirvana, but six game series can often be just as epic, and the battle between the Sharks and Stars is going to be remembered in both cities for quite a while.
Yes, it was a six-game series, but five of those games were decided by one goal, and four of those were in overtime. That includes last night's game where the two teams combined for a ridiculous 117 shots, the last coming when Stars captain Brendan Morrow tipped a Stephane Robidas shot past Evgeni Nabokov sometime past 2:14 a.m. U.S. EDT.
Up until that point, the two netminders had been nothing short of brilliant, with both turning in one game-saving stop after another. The most mind-numbing probably came in the first OT period, when Brad Richards sent a wrist rocket at a wide open net, only to see Nabokov snatch it with his glove hand. Later, an overhead replay would show that he had nabbed the puck right above the goal line.
But while Marty Turco and Nabokov were the top two stars of the game, it was on this night that Brendan Morrow demonstrated exactly why the Stars organization stripped Mike Modano of the captaincy and handed it over to him. Morrow was a force all night in every zone, never more than in the closing seconds of regulation when he absolutely leveled Milan Michalek along the right wing boards inside the San Jose zone. Michalek, who had been one of the best Sharks on the ice all night long, needed several minutes just to get off the ice. He wouldn't return.
Continue reading The Ice Sheet: And Then There Were Four ... Overtime Periods
Permalink |
Email this |
Comments