Well, the National Hockey League has hopelessly screwed itself now. It has unwittingly but in a very real sense created a Stanley Cup Final so wonderfully bizarre and delightfully absurd that the first game that ends up normal could absolutely result in its Toronto offices burned to the ground and as soon as the Knicks parade ends, burning their New York offices to the ground as well. The NHL would totally deserve that result because you cannot keep ratcheting up the improbability game after game and then, once the suckers are hooked, give the people "normal" hockey. People react poorly to bait-and-switch at tavern-watching level.
Put more simply, you cannot give people this or this or most amazingly, this and then just dump a regular old game on them once you've grabbed them. Bait-and-switch will never have had gained such a bad reputation.
Vegas-Carolina had already provided two weird games replete with blown leads, blown challenges and blown minds, which hadn't been expected by any members of the hockey punditocracy given that this was maybe the 11th most anticipated Finals matchup, behind Canadiens-anyone, Sabres-anyone, and in the case of one our more misguided editors, Rangers-anyone. But Game 3 gave us the absolute zenith of hold-my-beer truck, starting with not one but two disallowed Knights goals in the first four minutes of the second period, the first on a reviewed offside and the second on a reviewed goalie interference. Vegas coach John (Happy Face Fun Times) Tortorella made no visible objections to either, but that might have been because the cameras were showing us something less palpably profane.
But then it got good, and weird, and then good and weird.
First, Mitch Marner, the Maple Leafs ex-pat who has been among the best players in this postseason, assisted on Tomas Hertl's initial power play goal at 10:26, then scored one of his own 16 seconds later
. . . and then again almost four minutes after that . . . and then again two minutes and change after that. It was the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Finals history and giving the Golden Knights an insurmountable 4-0 lead.
It would have even been more insurmountable had he converted his penalty shot early in third period. He'd been slashed by Carolina's Sebastian Aho on a breakaway, but his attempt to make it 5-nil was foiled by Carolina's backup goalie Brandon Bussi, who had replaced starter Frederik Anderson after the second period barrage.
But insurmountable isn't what it used to be. Carolina scored a consolation goal through Jordan Martinook three minutes after Marner's miss that in an alternate universe would have given Vegas a 7-0 lead. Then Taylor Hall scored. Then Jordan Staal scored. All in 39 seconds. Suddenly 4-0 had become 4-3, with 12 minutes and change left to play. Nice tries, and all that, but nobody's buying this.
So of course Carolina scored a fourth, this time from Andrei Svechnikov with 1:42 left in regulation, sending us to one of the gods' greatest gifts to us: overtime playoff hockey. Marner's heroism had been muted, and suddenly a game that was merely remarkable went strange and stayed that way until one of the Knights' longest-serving players, defenseman Shea Theodore, beat Bussi with a slapshot 5:38 into the second overtime period that actually beat Bussi only after it had missed the net, bounced off the back wall and hit Bussi's leg pad before going in. A shot not on goal for the game-winner? Sure, what the hell.
But that's not all, you easily placated fools. The assist on Theodore's goal came from his defense partner and an even longer-serving Knight, Brayden McNabb, who had taken an 87-mph shot from Nikolaj Ehlers in the beezer two nights earlier and left the game holding his face as though it was trying to make a run for it. But of course he played Game 3, wearing a cage to protect a face that looked like Jackson Pollock had been practicing on it and a nose that couldn't decide which direction worked best. He logged more ice time (35:47) and shifts (49) than anyone except Theodore, and at game's end was greeted by his teammates with chants of "War-rior." This may seem overly Hallmark movie cringe-y to you, but hockey players do not normally chant anything to anyone for any reason because the players' ethos, especially at this time of year, is "if it hasn't broken off and been swept up by the Zamboni, it's good enough for you to play. And don't whine about it hurting." And McNabb did, got a chunk of hero time, and made this one of the best playoff games of the post-war era, that war being the Spanish-American.
Now comes the problem, though. After a Marner hat trick that could have been four, after Carolina's four-goal comeback and discovery of an alternate goalie in need be, after McNabb's face and Theodore's kissed-by-the-Buddha aim, what's Game 4 got for you? Anyone volunteering to play while on fire? I mean, it was nearly 100 degrees outside the arena at game time, so it wouldn't take much. Tortorella wearing a fez to add to his two known emotions in successive games? How many more emotions does he have? Any? Can Marner make the Maple Leafs even more miserable? Or does the series revert to standard run-of-the-mill sport and endanger both league offices?
Hard to say, though the law of big events says that you can't top this, even though the law of big events says that you shouldn't have been able to top Game 2. The only thing you can legitimately hope for is a Carolina win in Game 4 Tuesday night so that we are guaranteed at least six games and the increased possibility of a seventh, which is the only remaining proof that your god in whatever form it takes loves you. And even if you get one moment that rivals the seven or so you got last night, you're on a heater that you don't deserve and should cherish forever specifically because you don't deserve it. We're all just lucky, at least for now.
