NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- It was all one big party for Music City, from the multi-platinum country stars to the mass of humanity up and down Broadway all through the Stanley Cup Final.
But, like a lot of parties, all that was left in this one's wake was a throbbing headache and a ton of trash to pick up.
For all the fuss over the Predators' atmosphere for home games -- much of it overhyped by NBC broadcasts in an attempt to attract viewership beyond hockey diehards, including the decibel level inside Bridgestone Arena -- the indisputable fact was that the Penguins were never fazed by it. Not when they lost Games 3 and 4 to allow the series to be tied, certainly not when they returned to close out their championship, 2-0, in Game 6.
And the hardest evidence that the Penguins were never fazed came during, of all points, the 4-1 loss in Game 4.
The score was lopsided, sure, but Mike Sullivan was adamant afterward that "the score wasn't reflective of how we felt about our performance," and it it turned out there was ample cause to feel that way. Because it was that night that his team, after three games of being pinched against the boards and pressed from moving forward, finally shifted the attack to the vertical middle of the ice. And they did so to great effect, generating multiple breakaways and odd-man breaks.
Pekka Rinne was exemplary in the Nashville net, but that would mark the first and only time he was even ordinary in the Final.
So the solution was in place, and it soon came with devastating impact.
In Game 5, the Penguins utterly annihilated the Predators, 6-0, at PPG Paints Arena. Rinne was pulled after just one period by a perhaps panicky Peter Laviolette. The home team pounced for three goals in the first period, poured it on in the second, then -- in a coordinated move -- adopted an atypically physical approach and spent the rest of the night pounding Nashville's essentially important but worn-down defensemen. One after another, the hits came. One after another, they took their toll. P.K. Subban wasn't chirping as much. Mattias Ekholm wasn't hacking as much. Ryan Ellis was felled by a broken rib.
"Once we found the lanes in Game 4, we really got our legs going," Carl Hagelin would observe. "That really changed everything."
Game 6 could never have been a continuation of the Game 5 slaughter, if only because this one would be played on Nashville's "worst ice I've played on in my whole life," as Ian Cole indelicately worded it. The puck bounced nonstop, skipping over blades, left and right, forward and back. The most effective plays were made through the air, almost like lacrosse.
It was fitting, then, that the ice-breaker, the Cup-winner off the stick of Patric Hornqvist with 1:35 left in regulation was swatted well off the ice:
Just as it was fitting that Hagelin, who got his world-class legs going more than anyone, burst right up the middle of the rink to seal it, protecting the puck every stride of the way, he'd confess later, because he'd been positive it would pop off his stick:
As Hagelin sprung free of Subban, this was the scene on the visiting bench:
Then when the horn blew, the Nashville fans embarrassingly littered the ice, purportedly because their team earlier put the puck in the net after the whistle on a sequence that was never ruled a goal, but also possibly because there just isn't enough history here to respect or even appreciate hockey's ultimate moment.
Then, finally, the captain claimed the Cup, his third, the franchise's second in a row and fifth overall:
The real party in Nashville would soon follow:
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Predators. – MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
