“Ladies and gentlemen … the Stanley Cup.”
It couldn’t end in five games. No way could the final score represent anything greater than a one-goal game. Of course a Nathan LaFayette post needed to ring the bell. There’s no chance linesman Kevin Collins couldn’t let time expire on the other end of the ice opposite Mike Richter.
The script had to be written with pure agony and exuberance in mind.
Fifty-four years, the New Jersey Devils, Valeri Zelepukin, and the scrappy seventh-seeded Vancouver Canucks all served as monumental barriers for a normal human being.