Series is blowin' in the wind
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Tonight, Uptown, for the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins, a gust win.
Not a must win.
Even when it's a technical imperative, this column avoids ringing the must-win bell, as it is an obvious cliche. We always prefer a rhetorical faceoff between There's No Tomorrow and Their Backs Are To The Wall anyway.
But Game 5 is a gust win for Pittsburgh because a loss will create a tremendous gust of confidence and energy into the vacuum, and you won't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Thank you Zimmy.
If the Montreal Canadiens filch a 3-2 lead in this Eastern Conference best-of-seven semifinal, put another way, all kinds of intangibles ramp up in their favor. If the Penguins drop their fourth home game of this postseason tonight, those who like to invoke the hockey gods (these are the people who forget that, if there are hockey gods, there must also be bowling gods, and believe me, there are no bowling gods) will start talking destiny. It's because the Canadiens, an eight seed of little apparent danger when the playoffs started, will suddenly be positioned for an icebound version of the Triple Crown.
They will have beaten the best team in hockey (Washington), the defending Stanley Cup champions (guess who?), and the hottest team in these playoffs (Boston) by the time they arrive for the Stanley Cup final sometime this summer.
"You have to give them a lot of credit for playing the way they've played and defending the way they've defended and also for being opportunistic," Penguins boss Dan Bylsma said Friday during an optional skate.
"We find ourselves in a best-of-three with a team that is playing stingy, good hockey."
And still, that's just on the tangible side. Even as he was eloquent Friday in explaining how focused the Penguins are on improving their own game and trying to string together small accomplishments toward that end, it wasn't lost on Bylsma that Montreal's tempo and confidence reached a new level in Game 4 Thursday night.
"It was interesting to see the change of momentum in the building with them getting two quick goals and getting the lead," Bylsma said. "It's a tough place to play, but that was the first time that we had to deal with that kind of momentum in the building.
First Published May 8, 2010 12:00 am
