Dater: Winner Of Game 5 (Usually) Wins The Series

Tonight is huuuuuge

The winner of a Game 5 in a best-of-seven series that came in tied 2-2 does not always go on to win the series. I give you the 2001 New Jersey Devils, who shocked everybody with a 4-1 road win in Game 5 of that year’s Stanley Cup Finals against the Avs, and headed home to East Rutherford, N.J., for a presumed closeout Game 6. Patrick Roy allowed one goal the rest of the series and the Avs won the Cup in Ray Bourque’s final game of his 22-year career.

EVERYBODY thought the series was over after Game 5, including me. Before I got on the plane back to New York for Game 6, I was assigned to write a “Just in case” story of the Avs winning the Cup in seven games. It was to be a story for one of those one-page, front-page “We Win!” newspaper things where players and fans could hold them up in the air on TV right after a title win, to give the paper more publicity and then later sell them as souvenirs.

I’ll never forget thinking, “well, this thing is never going to see the light of day” so I wrote the most cornball story imaginable of the Avs’ future win. I used every “seventh heaven” cliche you could think of, every “the Devils got their due” and “No sympathy for the Devils” bad pun you could imagine and shipped it off to the editors. To this day, I still laugh hard, and cringe a little too, when I see that one-page “Extra” edition with that story on the front with my name on it.