courtesy cupcanal / flickr creative commons
I’ve always felt that a championship series that goes seven games is the penultimate in professional sports. Whether it be baseball, basketball, or of course my favorite, hockey, there truly is no other spectacle like it. An 82 game regular season (in the NHL), upwards of 21 games in the first three rounds, and another six games that haven’t decided anything, all to come down to sixty minutes.
Or even better, overtime. I’m not really a Boston fan per se, I like some of their fans, and I dislike the Canucks organization in general, so I’ve been watching this final as more of a “hockey” fan than anything – which makes it perfect that it’s going to a seventh game.
So for the first sixty minutes of the game, I’ll be cheering for a tie score – then in overtime, the longer it goes the better it gets. If we get to a third overtime series, you can bet your a** I’ll be one happy camper.
And while having the championship final go to a seventh game is not that uncommon, in the history of the NHL, ONLY TWO SERIES have ever gone to overtime in game seven. The first was in 1950, which remains the longest Stanley Cup Final game seven ever, with Pete Babando scoring for the Red Wigns at 8:31 of the second overtime.
The only other time it happened? Four years later, in 1954, it was the Wings again winning, this time at 4:29 of the first overtime on a goal by Tony Leswick.
Yep, there’s nothing like a game seven.
