Here is the cheap and lazy way to show that Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final is the best postseason event of the calendar year so far, courtesy Chris Cuthbert and TSN:
And by doing that, we've both saved ourselves the proverbial thousand words and hustled you pretty royally. This game could only be done justice in its original three-hour format, as opposed to the 10 minutes of editors' craft above, and we are even granting grace in that three-hour figure for the often stultifying pregame and between-periods migraineries. To be totally reductive about it, this is that rarest of sporting events in which nobody got cheated and everyone came away better for the experience.
Of course, the Vegas Golden Knights might feel a bit hard done-by with that description since they hacked up a 2-0 lead, lost Brayden McNabb's face to a fiendish one-timer from Carolina's Nikolaj Ehlers after barely five minutes to reduce their side to five defensemen, were denied the apparent winning goal with five minutes left in regulation because of a goalie interference call and a disallowed coach's challenge, and ultimately lost in overtime, 4-3 on Seth Jarvis' power play goal not even four minutes in. (Yeah, you read that right—an overtime power play.) The game itself was too good in too many other ways for anyone's complaints to be taken seriously, although Vegas coach John Tortorella's performatively grudgeful 76-word postgame presser came close.
But Torts' bearded-highway-flare impersonation aside, the Game 2 result was right and proper for one reason above all others, and that is that five more games like it can be consider the only right and just result. Carolina saving us all from the specter of a looming sweep with three goals in 305 seconds in the waning portion of the third period, and Jarvis' one-timer in overtime, gave us all license to imagine that which we could not have fathomed had the Knights scored the game-winner instead—more hockey and less of everything else.
Vegas going up two games would have brought out any number of teeth-grinding scenarii, starting with the emergence of the useful but anonymous Brett Howden, who is the current favorite for the Conn Smythe Trophy after scoring the first two goals of the game here and here. Howden, a devoted if underrecognized second line winger, now has 13 goals this postseason, more than he had in this or any of his eight regular seasons save last year. We also avoided feverish discussions of the last team to win the first two games on the road and end up winning the Cup—the deeply improbable Los Angeles Kings in 2013—was a series that was drunk on its face from the outset because the Kings were an eight-seed playing a six-seed (New Jersey), which had never happened before and hasn't happened since. Vegas winning the Cup in a walk would have felt like an unsatisfying fait accompli, a pewter gray end to what had previously been a vibrant postseason.
We are spared those eye-and-ear bleeds, though, because the Hurricanes chose life instead. They are no easier an out than the Knights, and they proved that with three third period goals from Logan Stankoven, Mark Jankowski, and Jordan Staal. Those goals created a wholly new series with entirely new plot paths. The Stankoven goal, scored out of the ennui of the first 50 minutes, served as a violently shaken beer can; its pop energized a depressed crowd and caused the Canes to become faster and more determined to avoid being shamed in their own barn. The Jankowski score two and a half minutes later not only tied the game but obliterated that doomed vibe completely.
It was around that moment that the game went from merely frenetic slapstick to hilariously weird. The Knights relocated their initiative and pressured Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen with considerable purpose over the next two minutes. The game's apparent denouement was an Ivan Barbashev's wraparound attempt with five minutes left in regulation that Andersen seemed to have stopped with a desperate lunge of his stick, at least until the puck subsequently trickled through a pile of prone humans and into the net for what seemed like the go-ahead goal. "Seemed like" must do considerable work here, because 1) referee Jean Hebert had blown the play dead and negated the goal and 2) further mooted it by ruling goalie interference on Barbashev for pitchforking Andersen. Tortorella challenged the call even though the likelihood that it would have been changed was unlikely, the Knights were penalized for losing the challenge (a fine rule that basketball should adopt in some form immediately if not sooner), and Staal deflected a Shayne Gostisbehere drive past Vegas goalie Carter Hart shot 25 seconds after the Barbashev scrum. Magically and improbably, Vegas' 3-2 lead had turned into Carolina's 3-2 lead.
That would have been plenty for one night, but Vegas re-re-re-assembled itself and with the help of an ill-considered interference call on Carolina winger Jackson Blake against Barbashev with 3:29 to play. As a result, the Knights spent most of the next two-plus minutes in the Carolina end, culminating in what became the second version of their third goal by Mark Stone, this time an apparent tip of a Mitch Marner wrister with 1:21 left. The resulting overtime, other than being far too brief, gave us the first real Jarvis sighting; the Carolina star, with his linemates Sebastian Aho and Andrew Svechnikov, had largely been missing from any important work through much of the postseason. His one-timer from the left dot off a Gostisbehere pass beat Hart cleanly to end a spectacular rally and rejuvenate what had looked like a Vegas boatrace, if that isn't too non-sequitur-y for you.
These two teams, neither of which topped anyone's list for an ideal Cup final, have already cobbled a fascinating first game, which Vegas won 5-4 after falling behind 2-0, and now a glorious second game that teases at classic status even after only a few hours' reflection. As for how it compares to the exemplary Game 1 of the NBA Finals, well, that's eye of the beholder stuff. It is never good to assume that an entire series is defined by its first three hours, and especially not its first six, but Knights-Canes 1 was excellent, Knicks-Spurs 1 was slightly more dramatic, and Canes-Knights 2 was brainlocking good fun.
Besides, who in their right mind would object to having two great finals run simultaneously? Nobody who doesn't deserve six months on a Louisiana prison farm, that's who. Canes-Knights 3, which resumes Saturday in the sweatshop of southern Nevada, already feels like evidence that even a Stanley Cup Final that's short on marquee names is every bit as worthy a summertime distraction as the NBA Finals. If you play your cards right, you won't notice that the kids are home from school until July.
