Collier: Game 7 home ice meaningless
Share with others:
Maybe we can remember this before we spend six to eight weeks next winter trumpeting the importance of home-ice advantage.
Maybe we can dispense with the thundering this-is-our-house entreaties that explode from the Consol Energy Center's state-of-the-art amplifiers, the aural bravado that simply isn't worth the decibels it absorbs, much less describe any relationship to reality.
Now, with the only semi-startling events of a forgettable Wednesday night, the Penguins are 2-6 in Game 7s on home ice, having lost, 1-0, to the indestructible Tampa Bay Lightning, just as they closed Civic Arena last spring to the Game 7 delight of the Montreal Canadiens.
Oh yeah, home ice around here is huge.
Three of Tampa Bay's four wins in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals came in Pittsburgh, the only place in North America where the home team lost Game 7 on home ice.
There was no more appropriate way for this Penguins season to end than in the middle of another frantically inept power play, which is exactly what was in full regress at the sound of the final horn of the final game of the inaugural season across the street from the Civic tomb.
Destiny might have a new home, but it has got a chicken-scat power play.
Tampa Bay scored the only goal it needed to win Game 7 on a virtual replay of the exquisite play it worked against Marc-Andre Fleury in the second period of Game 6. Dominic Moore took the puck behind the net just far enough to force Fleury to turn his head, and just as he did, Moore slid the biscuit in the opposite direction with the backhand to a waiting Sean Bergenheim at the goal line.
Bergenheim flicked it home again -- again from about 15 feet away -- and again he gave the Lightning a one-goal lead, this time in the final game of a series that seemed more combustible with every twist of the wrist.
But for their last comical power play, the one that left them 1 for 35 in the series, and 0 for 25 at home, Dan Bylsma kept Alex Kovalev off the ice, even when he pulled Marc-Andre Fleury for an extra skater. The head coach had clearly run out of patience with Kovalev, whose second Pittsburgh engagement will go into history as pretty much a bust. And it's pretty much history as we speak.
But even 6 on 4, the Penguins could do nothing with Lightning goaltender Dwayne Roloson.
First Published April 28, 2011 1:06 am
