(Fort Lauderdale, FL) It’s as if the two teams have passed the word to each other on the eve of the final game of the season.
Both for the Panthers and the Oilers, after training, the players talked about the childhood dream of playing a seventh game, because they dreamed of it all their youth, in mini-hockey, in the backyard or at the neighborhood ice rink.
After all, it is not trivial. This is the 18th time in the NHL’s more than 106-year history that the Stanley Cup will be won in a seventh game. It’s the first time in five years, the second time since the Bruins and Canucks reached the limit in 2011.
It’s so rare that only one of the 40 players in uniform Monday has ever experienced it in real life, not in the alley. That player is Panthers winger Vladimir Tarasenko, who won with the Blues in 2019.
The Blues, like this year’s Panthers, had missed the chance to close the books, leading 3-2 after five games. “I remember there were a lot of expectations around Game 6, because we were playing at home,” Tarasenko recalled, in a corner of the locker room at the Panthers training center.
“But for a Game 6, you have a few options in mind. A Game 7 is simply a game, and it’s definitely the last. You have to prepare yourself. »
With the 2019 Blues, Samuel Blais was a teammate of Tarasenko. The Quebecer also sent a text message to his former colleague before the start of the final “to wish him to win another one”.
In this seventh game, Blais was blanked, but the energy player that he is had made a key play that allowed his team to open the scoring: a hard-hitting check, which allowed the puck to be maintained in the offensive zone.
Blais managed this performance despite the nervousness that overwhelmed him the day before the match.
“I had trouble falling asleep,” he remembers on the other end of the line. You think about all the scenarios that could happen. You’re one day away from living your dream and you don’t know if you’re going to live it again. That was the stress. »
However, he had not spoken about it to his teammates at breakfast, in order to avoid “their doubting me. But the excitement, the nervousness were there.
“At least it had a good night’s sleep for my pre-game nap!” », he adds.
Pascal Rhéaume is also one of the lucky handful who participated in one of the 17th final matches in history. It was in 2003, with New Jersey. Like the 2019 Blues, the Devils led 3-2 in the series, and the sixth game had escaped them decisively (5-2).
He also remembers sleeping problems, problems which were however common throughout the series. “A lot of us took Ambien to sleep. You want to sleep ! »
Our two men, however, remember favorable circumstances for the fateful game, which put everyone in a good frame of mind. The 2019 Blues arrived in Boston with a 9-3 record on opposing rinks. “We played better on the road, we played a simpler game. And our leaders, Alex Pietrangelo and Ryan O’Reilly, were good at calming us down,” says Blais.
The 2003 Devils played this one-off game at home, where they had an 11-1 record. The nerves of Game 6 had been replaced by a certain confidence, inspired by “our leaders, guys like Ken Daneyko and Scott Stevens. And what’s more, when you have Martin [Broudre] as a goalkeeper…”
The Devils scored the first goal of the game. “As soon as we took the lead, it was Devils hockey, flat hockey. We were playing trap. If you asked the world, were you having fun watching us? No. But we had the players to do it. »And they won 3-0. “It’s been what, 21 years? I still remember it like it was yesterday. This is the greatest achievement of my career. You couldn’t ask for more! », says Rhéaume.
In theory, Panthers and Oilers players will experience these same kinds of emotions between now and Monday evening. This is why everyone emphasized that they will live a childhood dream.
Except that the dream, the real one, is to lift the Stanley Cup, and this dream, the Panthers players have just missed three opportunities in a row to achieve it. They were the 211th team in NHL history to lead a series 3-0. Only four of them ended up losing said series, and only one made it to the Finals: the 1942 Red Wings.
The circumstances that led the Panthers and the Oilers to this seventh game could not be more different. While Stuart Skinner, with his 10-0 record in Games 4-7 this spring, met with the media after practice, Sergei Bobrovsky, with his .793 save in the last three games, was excused from practice of the day. At a press briefing, Paul Maurice justified the leave with an explanation of nosebleed complexity.
The fact remains that as a good communicator, Maurice had to end up conceding that the situation of his team is unusual. His admission came in response to a colleague who questioned him about his club’s ability to forget the last three defeats.
“If you understand why you found yourself in such a situation, and I’m talking about the specific details on the ice here, you no longer drag the past and you move forward.
“But I understand your questions. There’s a much larger context that means nothing to me but everything to you. You have stories to write and what makes them so great is that context. No kid in their backyard dreams of scoring the winning goal in overtime of Game 3 of the qualifying round. It’s an exciting game, it has a context and we’re going to live in that context.”
To be exciting, it will be. Good game.
