By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1
Tonight, Uptown, for the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins, a gust win.
Not a must win.
Even when it's a technical imperative, this column avoids ringing the must-win bell, as it is an obvious cliche. We always prefer a rhetorical faceoff between There's No Tomorrow and Their Backs Are To The Wall anyway.
But Game 5 is a gust win for Pittsburgh because a loss will create a tremendous gust of confidence and energy into the vacuum, and you won't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Thank you Zimmy.
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Penguins forward Sidney Crosby battles with Canadiens defenseman Hal Gill during Tuesday's Game 3 in the Bell Centre in Montreal.
If the Montreal Canadiens filch a 3-2 lead in this Eastern Conference best-of-seven semifinal, put another way, all kinds of intangibles ramp up in their favor. If the Penguins drop their fourth home game of this postseason tonight, those who like to invoke the hockey gods (these are the people who forget that, if there are hockey gods, there must also be bowling gods, and believe me, there are no bowling gods) will start talking destiny. It's because the Canadiens, an eight seed of little apparent danger when the playoffs started, will suddenly be positioned for an icebound version of the Triple Crown.
They will have beaten the best team in hockey (Washington), the defending Stanley Cup champions (guess who?), and the hottest team in these playoffs (Boston) by the time they arrive for the Stanley Cup final sometime this summer.
"You have to give them a lot of credit for playing the way they've played and defending the way they've defended and also for being opportunistic," Penguins boss Dan Bylsma said Friday during an optional skate.
"We find ourselves in a best-of-three with a team that is playing stingy, good hockey."
And still, that's just on the tangible side. Even as he was eloquent Friday in explaining how focused the Penguins are on improving their own game and trying to string together small accomplishments toward that end, it wasn't lost on Bylsma that Montreal's tempo and confidence reached a new level in Game 4 Thursday night.
"It was interesting to see the change of momentum in the building with them getting two quick goals and getting the lead," Bylsma said. "It's a tough place to play, but that was the first time that we had to deal with that kind of momentum in the building.
"They have been everything we expected with the way they are playing and the way they are playing defense and the way their goaltender is playing.
"For anybody who thought it wouldn't be a battle, for anybody who thought it would be easy -- and that certainly wasn't the thought in our room and I certainly don't think it was in the Canadiens' room, either -- you can see now this is a tough team to deal with."
In this back-and-forth drama of To Hab and Hab Not, wait until you see the degree of difficulty Monday night in Montreal should the home team have a chance to end the series there.
And to think that the Penguins walked to within 60 indifferent minutes of such a hole with just 93 shaggy seconds of the third period the other night.
"I don't think there were any breakdowns," Penguins defenseman Mark Eaton said shortly after Bylsma left the podium Friday.
"It was something that we talked about after the second period. We knew that it was a situation where they didn't want to go down, 3-1, and they were going to come out desperate and play their best hockey of the series. They did that.
"I just don't think we matched their desperation in the third period. You have to tip your hat to them. They came out and did what they had to do to create some offense in the third."
The Penguins can stabilize their situation by refusing to let Montreal's roiling defense continue to detain their wings along the half-wall and by drawing some energy from a home atmosphere that has not been as impactful as it can be.
What they can't do is allow Canadiens goaltender Jaroslav Halak, whom they have beaten for only four goals in the past three games, to hollow out their confidence the way he did the Capitals'.
"You can't let the way a goalie is playing change the way you play," said Eaton. "When you do that, you're giving in. You can't do that, especially in the playoffs."
Or, certainly, in a gust-win situation.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com.
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