Collier: Playing a Game 7 is a chilling prospect
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TAMPA, Fla. -- No one ever admits as much, but part of what you earn when you jump ahead, 3-1, in any best-of-seven series is a temporary license to screw around with that lead, and now no one will accuse the Penguins of failure to exercise all said rights and privileges therein.
Coming off a pasting on home ice Saturday that chopped their lead in half, the Penguins followed up at St. Pete Times Forum Monday night by failing to so much as put a shot on the net for more than half the first period, setting the tone for another feckless giveaway, this one gladly accepted by the Lightning as a 4-2 victory that puts the season on the line Wednesday night at Consol Energy Center.
The Penguins have had a 3-1 lead nine times in their postseason history, and eight of those times they hammered things down without facing the chilling prospect of a Game 7. The one time they were compelled to do so, the New York Islanders beat them; that was 1975.
That's real historical Chiller Theatre stuff right there.
Moreover, no one need be reminded that losing Game 7 on home ice is something of a Penguins vice if not a full-blown habit, and there's a certain hockey symmetry about the prospect of that very thing.
A year ago, with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin flying around the offensive zone and Sergei Gonchar quarterbacking something called the power play, the Penguins still coughed away Game 7 to the Montreal Canadiens in the second round to close Mellon Arena. Doing the same thing a year later to the Lightning in the first round might just be the natural order of having none of those stars this time around.
"There is some experience on our team with that kind of drama and emotion," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said after his team's first road loss of the postseason. "A do-or-die situation for both teams is a different kind of emotion and something we're familiar with."
The emotion of a Game 6 Monday night didn't seem to electrify anybody in uniform. Tentative probably isn't the precise adjective to describe the early chapters, so let's just say that both teams could have benefitted from a shot clock.
The Lightning, having spent most of the morning interviews explaining how it was an inexperienced but evolving playoff team after five games of this Eastern Conference quarterfinal, instead looked as jumpy as a Lindsay Lohan public relations staffer.
"We know how to act and what to do now," is what Lightning coach Guy Boucher was selling Monday morning.
First Published April 26, 2011 12:00 am
