PLAYOFF BEARD: THE SERIES THAT WOULDN'T END

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

A power-play goal for the overtime winner, that's a perfect anticlimax if ever there was one.

The NHL season has officially become The Girl Next Door without the partial nudity -- it won't end. By all rights, the Detroit Red Wings should be sipping champagne from the Stanley Cup and wearing jockstraps on their heads, but they apparently carry on as if imply having superstars playing a dull defensive game was all it would take for the Pittsburgh Penguins, now headed home down 3-2 in the Stanley Cup final, to crumple of their own accord in a clinching game.

Instead, Marc-Andre Fleury was mostly brilliant, stopping 55-of-58 shots and the Pens won 4-3 in three overtimes in a Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final that stretched all the way into Conan O'Brien's time slot, but probably didn't make many lifelong hockey fans among the insomniacs and shift workers who tuned into NBC expecting to get late-night laughs. Instead, they got Petr Sykora scoring the winner -- on a feed from Evgeni Malkin, who had centred the puck after it hit one of the referees right on his rear end. (Seriously, watch the replays).

A game climaxed by a goal in triple OT by a team facing elimination -- and Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg did ping the crossbar in the second OT -- sounds exciting, right? It's always fun when a Stanley Cup playoff game goes multiple overtimes, stretching out endlessly, in this case the possible last hockey we'll see until the leaves turn -- and the possible last Stanley Cup final game that Hockey Night in Canada's Bob Cole will ever commentate. It's just that the conclusion was a major bringdown. It was going to be so awesome to see Gary Bettman, who would probably love to have future playoff games decided in a penalty-shot shootout, have to present the Cup after an overtime marathon.

Detroit, which is outshooting Pittsburgh almost 2-to-1 in the series, should have capped it tonight and touched off discussions of whether this ranks among the most dominant playoff runs in hockey annals. Instead, the stupid Penguins, who tied it with a lousy 35 seconds left and then just held on until being gifted with a four-minute power play in the third OT, created ambiguity. Sports fans hate ambiguity.

Never before have two uneven teams been this close to being dead even. Sorry for being ambivalent; it's a passive-aggressive reaction to the (a) a series not living up the hype, which was predictable; (b) the series itself being possible harbinger of the return of something like the watching-paint-dry hockey of the pre-lockout era; and (c) the uneasy future of the NHL (if the latest new stories are any indication, about eight to 10 U.S. franchises are up the creek without a paddle financially, and Bettman still won't let one of them relocate to Canada).

The second is the most important. Detroit winning has its upsides (European captain, Daniel Cleary being a Newfoundlander, its first Cup since Steve Yzerman's retirement), in a copycat world, it might set off more teams trying to win by just playing deny, deny, deny defensive hockey. Throw in the fact that the Pittsburgh Penguins, far from being a bright young team for the next 5-10 years, are just a flash in the pan due to the stupid salary cap, and that the failure of Bettman's reign means there will probably another game-killing labour stoppage in a few years, and you can see how it's easy to get cynical, even after triple OT.

Detroit should close it out in Game 6. A blowout would be nice, but no one's picky.