Sporting News

Stanley Cup finals turning Devilishly dramatic

NEW YORK—Around midnight, the corridors of Penn Station took on a mighty buzz. Could it be? Impossible. But then came a roar, followed by a pushback rumble, and it occurred that hatred might finally be making an appearance.

This is the ingredient that fortifies all sporting events. Not the evil, criminal side of hatred, for that only cheapens the games, makes them difficult to watch. But any rivalry—and certainly any playoff series—needs a stiff dose of harmless disgust and loathing for it to really take root.

And so here it came, a cloud of vitriol descending upon this humid Petri dish of Saturday night humanity. A puffy man in a New Jersey Devils shirt started to sing, his voice a siren call for other Devils fans to appear like zombies in the underground din. They approached three folks from Los Angeles who wanted nothing more than to find the 1 train and who had the misfortune of wearing Kings’ gear.

"You never won a Cup. You never, ever won a Cup. NEVER, EVER. YOU NEVER WON A CUP,” went the chant, and those three lost souls just sat there and smirked.

It had been some sports Saturday, almost obscene in its abundance. I’ll Have Another, well, couldn’t, but more than 85,000 still squeezed into a Long Island track for the 144th running of the Belmont Stakes, and probably as many jaws dropped when Union Rags nipped Paynter at the wire in a photo finish. For all its unseemly faults, horse racing still brings the charms.

Up in the Bronx, the Mets resumed their inner-borough struggle with the Yankees, and Nick Swisher somehow managed to contain his exuberance. Over in Jersey, Lionel Messi, the most fantastical soccer player on these shores and others, won a game for Argentina against rival Brazil all by himself.

But no matter where you traveled or what you watched, snippets of the same conversation kept slipping through: Can’t wait for tonight, for Game 7 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, for one last round between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics.

See, even in this teeming metropolis, even with one of the local hockey teams in the Stanley Cup finals and so much else going on, that one event swiveled above. Even Manny Pacquiao, a huge Celtics fan, made sure he didn’t begin to defend his WBO welterweight championship against Timothy Bradley in Las Vegas until the basketball game ended, and now Pacquiao has double the reason to not want to get out of bed.

How easy it is to hate the Heat in the practical sense, like one might hate a traffic jam, or a broken air conditioner. In these parts the hatred for the Celtics lingers and simmers, like hatred for the man who took your job ages ago, or the stunner who got away.

That’s the trouble with these Stanley Cup finals. They’re just ... there.

On they roll, the Kings’ 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven now whittled to 3-2, the goalies at both ends leaping out of the crease to make stunning saves, the pressure tightening like a wrench as very little separates the two teams, the Devils’ Marek Zidlicky literally throwing his body into the Kings’ Mike Richards to break up a third-period breakaway chance Saturday at the Rock and then Richards nearly tying the game with a skinny 7.6 seconds left in regulation with a slap shot that caused hearts to stop.

Martin Brodeur made the save, of course, and how can he engender anything but admiration or at least grudging respect as his career meanders on in such stunning fashion? The number that now precedes all else—40, his age—must be written before his saves (25 Saturday in the Devils’ 2-1 Game 5 victory) and the number of Cups he has won (three, but that doesn’t have to be the final tally).

“We’re still alive. We have a chance,” Brodeur said, before hopping aboard a return flight to L.A. for Monday’s Game 6. “It’s a difficult thing to get yourself ready for games like that, and we’ve done it twice now. It drains you a lot. It takes a lot of energy out of you.

“But it’s worth it.”

This could be the juice these Finals crave. A nation might shrug at the Devils, who often seem to be making noise in June, and blink at the Kings, who are still considered a novelty. But if it’s impossible to hate them, to even care much about them, America at least loves its comebacks, and that’s reason enough to tune in.

In hockey you have to stretch all the way back to 1942 to find a team that rallied from a 3-0 deficit and won the best-of-seven finals. Those Toronto Maple Leafs have swiftly become legends in the Devils’ locker room. Much closer to the heart is 2004 and the Boston Red Sox, who did something against some team.

The Kings had been playing on a different level for so long—taking out the top three seeds in the Western Conference, twice winning in overtime in Jersey—they were due a bit of hardship. It came early Saturday, when Jonathan Quick proved he’s made of flesh and blood.

With Willie Mitchell serving an awful interference penalty, time dwindled on the Devils’ power play, pretty awful itself, until Quick muffed the angle on the puck a few feet from his goal line. He meant to push it around the net, into the corner, but the puck instead slid onto the forehand of Zach Parise, who stuffed it past the late-arriving Quick.

Parise, the Devils' captain who’s about as likeable an athlete as they come, had grown cranky in recent days over criticism regarding his absence on the scoresheet in the series’ first four games.

"I think you guys just pissed him off, that's all. Keep doing it,” said Devils coach Pete DeBoer, laughing, and who can hate a man who appreciates fans and the media—even the inane types—and believes it’s part of his job description to promote the cool side of hockey?

Quick remains otherworldly, a kid from Connecticut who hasn’t been squeezed by the grand stage. Who can hate an American goalie who cares not a whit about being famous or getting asked to appear in a credit card commercial and who wants only to out-do the immortal Brodeur while still paying him the proper respect?

Suddenly and quite happily for hockey fans toddling about in the bowels of Penn Station and elsewhere, the Stanley Cup finals have taken quite the mood swing. What awaits in Los Angeles? Visions of McSorley’s illegal stick? A celebration 45 years in the making? Can’t hate a single bit of any of that.

Around the Web