It's a Game 7 Gameday!

A few thoughts about Game 7s and what's ahead tonight.

Well, it’s the best and worst thing in sports: a Game 7.

It’s awesome when your team isn’t playing and terrible when it is. The stresses of a game in which your season could end OR continue is gut wrenching. The lows of an abrupt end meet the absolute jubilation of moving on to a fresh start in one 60-minute (barring the excruciating addition of overtime) hockey game.

What made last year’s run so great was never having to deal with the stresses of such a contest. The closest we got was Game 6 in St. Louis before Darren Helm’s last-second heroics spared us from overtime, an overtime loss or a Game 7 after holding a 3-1 series lead.

The 2020 Game 7 loss to Dallas was brutal. I don’t want to talk about it (but I will), because that game still makes me feel a certain way and I don’t want to re-live it. Between missing Gabe Landeskog after his initial knee injury, the late goal to take the lead, blowing said lead and losing in OT on terrible net-front coverage with your ninth-string goalie between the pipes, it was not a fun afternoon in the bubble. The 2019 game against San Jose is frustrating given the circumstances around a certain disallowed goal. But, let’s be honest: that 2019 team was exciting and fun, but they weren’t ready yet. It was a stepping-stone season.

On the flip side, what made the 2001 run special was the fact that the mighty, Hall-of-Fame-powered Avalanche of that season needed to win two Game 7s to capture the Cup, including one in the Final. They did so in two very different ways, too. In the second round, they allowed the Kings to comeback from down 3-1 in the series to force the decisive game where it was tied 1-1 going into the third period, only to rip off four goals and win 5-1 (I still think about that Ville Nieminen power-play tally more than a normal person should 22 years later). Then — in the Stanley Cup Final against the defending champs — Colorado erased a 3-2 deficit in the series, won 4-0 on the road in Game 6 and came back to deliver in Denver two days later, exactly one month after dispatching the Kings, to hoist the Cup.