Game 7 Drama

I didn't watch much of the Stanley Cup Finals, but did watch most of last night's Game 7 between Carolina and Edmonton. I have small connections to both teams, but was probably rooting for Edmonton more than eventual winner Carolina.

I covered two minor league hockey teams for a newspaper during the 1999-2000 season, and guys like Erik Cole and Craig Adams have since become grizzled veterans for the Hurricanes after they played for the Cincinnati Cyclones six years ago.

During that season, I got to become friends with Dave Semenko, a former winger with those great Oilers teams of the 1980s. He was a policeman who skated on Wayne Gretzky's line and at 6-4, 245 pounds, kept opposing teams honest. He scouts for Edmonton now, and we'll keep in touch a little bit. I've got a fairly decent story about him drinking all the red wine in my house, and I'll just leave it at that.

Game 7s in any sport often can be anti-climactic, but Monday's did not disappoint. When Carolina scored early in the game and again in the second period to make the game 2-0 on its home ice, I figured it was all over. But Edmonton hung tough and sliced its deficit in half with plenty of time left.

It was good hockey. Speed, precision passing, crisp skating, aggressive defense and admirable goaltending. For much of the first two periods, Carolina appeared to be the aggressor, but Craig MacTavish must have given quite a locker room speech before the third period because his Oilers came out and matched -- at times surpassed -- the 'Canes intensity.

And for a short spell, the game was so clean that there didn't seem to be one whistle between the 15-minute mark and the 11-minute mark in the final period. As those last minutes wound down, and the desperate visitors tried to mount a rally, Carolina, bolstered by a boisterous crowd, stepped up and played lockdown defense. And young goalie Cam Ward was equal to the moment.

Even with a brief two-man advantage, Edmonton couldn't get the tying goal. I was trying to explain strategy a little bit to Baton, who knows little about hockey but sincerely enjoyed watching last night's game. I told her that the NHL playoffs last for about two months, and the guys who make it this far are exhausted from beating the hell out of each other for seven games in this particular series. Known as a tough-guy sport, it reduces to tears some men who look on as sweaty, bearded gladiators take off their helmets and exchange handshakes and kind words at center ice in the moments afterward.

I remember getting a little choked up when either Dallas in 1999 or New Jersey the following year won the Stanley Cup with a goal in sudden-death overtime of Game 7. It gets no more dramatic than that in any sport.