Game Seven, Baybee. Game Seven!

So, the Beloved Wings pull another one out of the hat... and won this one going away.  Big Mo is on our side and Game Seven will be played in enemy territory out in San Jose.  But that's OK.  The Wings can... and WILL... beat those Sharks in their own barn, witness night before last.  That said, there's NOTHING quite like a Game Seven in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Nothing.

Tonight's game was a nail-biter... scoreless through two periods with the Sharks drawing first blood four minutes into the third.  From the linked ESPN game recap:

Skating with confidence and desperation, the Red Wings outshot San Jose 45-25, but they were on the verge of elimination after Couture batted a rebound out of midair and the puck trickled past goalie Jimmy Howard with 16:06 remaining. The puck barely crossed the goal line before Howard covered it with his glove, but the goal stood after a review.

The Wings threw everything but the kitchen sink at the Sharks yet couldn't seem to get anything past Neemee (whose name I INTENTIONALLY misspelled), who was the difference in the game up to the point that Couture scored for the Sharks.  Jimmy Howard, to his everlasting credit, was just as good as Neemee even though he faced half the shots.  

So, here we are with 16 minutes left in the game and Neemee doin' his very best brick wall imitation through 50+ minutes of play.  I told SN1 that we'd seen THIS movie before... the Wings dominating the game in nearly every aspect, only to have a garbage goal give the accursed Tiburones the lead... and he responded with the UCR cliché: there's a lot o' hockey left.  And so there was.

Yup.  Zetterberg tied it about seven minutes later, Filppula got the go-ahead goal less than two minutes after that and the Wings survived a San Jose power-play to win it.  Oh yeah... Darren Helm (my hero!) added an empty-netter to make it 3-1, the first time we've had anything other than a one-goal game in this series.

It don't get much better than that, Gentle Reader.  Unless it's a Game Seven... for the WIN!  I just hope my heart holds out.

LGRW!

(photo and game stars from ESPN)