Heaven and Hell: Game Seven in the NHL Playoffs

Originally published in the 2003 NHL Playoff Program

By Lucas Aykroyd

Nothing feels better for an NHL player than winning the seventh game of a hard-fought playoff series.

Any victory is sweet, but this is even sweeter. By the time you hit Game Seven, you’re deep into a war of attrition with your opponents.

If you want to win that game, you must give everything you’ve got left: physically, mentally, and emotionally. It all comes down to one shot at heaven. And the chance of losing is a specter too painful to contemplate.

Milan Hejduk of the Colorado Avalanche still gets goosebumps when he recalls heading into Game Seven of the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals, where his team marched to a 3-1 triumph over New Jersey on June 9.

“Everybody was pumped,” Hejduk said. “You can’t sleep the night before the game because you’re thinking about it. It’s an amazing feeling. If you get through it like we did, you will never forget it.”

The magic of Game Sevens has touched scores of NHLers since the League first instituted a seven-game format for the first round of the playoffs and the Stanley Cup Finals in 1939.

The Original Six NHL produced some awesome winner-takes-all scenarios. In 1942, the Toronto Maple Leafs made history when they rebounded from a 3-0 series deficit over the Detroit Red Wings, notching a 3-1 victory in the seventh game of the Finals. No other club has ever replicated that feat. Then Toronto beat Detroit 2-1 on a Babe Pratt goal in 1945’s Game Seven for the Cup, with the unprecedented battle of rookie netminders going to Frank McCool over Harry Lumley.

In the next decade, the Wings traded agony for ecstasy, winning Game Sevens in the Finals in 1950, 1954 and 1955. Journeyman forward Pete Babando notched the Cup-clincher against the New York Rangers in the second overtime in 1950. His was the first sudden-death tally ever scored in the seventh game of the Finals. Detroit’s Tony Leswick would do the same in 1954 versus the Montreal Canadiens, and it’s never happened again.

Memorable Game Sevens also highlighted the Finals in the mid-1960’s. Johnny Bower’s 4-0 shutout over Detroit for an injury-riddled Leafs team in 1964 still warms the hearts of Toronto fans. The heroics of Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jean Beliveau and goaltender Lorne “Gump” Worsley lifted Montreal to a 4-0 win over Chicago the following year.

After the NHL began its expansion in 1968, the odds of seeing classic Game Sevens prior to the Finals increased with extra rounds added.

When Montreal went the distance with the Boston Bruins in the 1979 semi-finals, it provided a dramatic illustration of the joy and sadness that emerge from these games. The psychology of line-matching was also something to behold.

Bruins coach Don Cherry, who had lost the 1977 and 1978 Finals to his archrivals, was hell-bent on keeping Guy Lafleur off the scoresheet in Game Seven. Cherry told checking forward Don Marcotte to shadow the Canadiens all-star winger, a tall order since Scotty Bowman began triple-shifting Lafleur.

Cherry’s plan almost worked, as Boston led Montreal 4-3 with under four minutes left in the third period. But a botched line change left the Bruins with too many men on the ice. “My heart actually hurt then, and remembering now makes it hurt again,” said Cherry.

On the ensuing power play, Lafleur blossomed like his nickname, “The Flower.” Racing down right wing, he took a drop pass from Jacques Lemaire and blasted a laser past Boston goalie Gilles Gilbert to tie the game. When Yvon Lambert finished off a 2-on-1 to win it for Montreal in overtime, it was either poetry on ice or the final stab to the heart, depending on which team you favored.

The fired-up Habs carried their momentum into the Finals, defeating the Rangers in five games to claim their fourth straight Cup. Meanwhile, Cherry vowed never to reveal the identity of the unfortunate soul whose gaffe led to Lafleur’s marker.

Another coach who would have done anything to win a seventh game was Jacques Demers. Behind the bench with St. Louis during the 1986 semi-finals with Calgary, he sneakily threw pennies on the ice on several occasions to force stoppages in play and get extra rest for his players. But the officials got wise to Demers and the Blues lost the deciding contest 2-1, as Calgary earned its first-ever Finals berth.

The Flames, however, proved powerless that year against rookie sensation Patrick Roy, who had already staked his claim as a world-class netminder with his performance for Montreal in Game Seven versus the Hartford Whalers in the second round.

Unintimidated by the situation, the 20-year-old matched Mike Liut save for save. At one point his brilliance left Hartford sniper Pierre Larouche slumped against Roy’s crossbar with an expression of disbelief. After giving up a late tying goal, Roy kept his cool in overtime until fellow rookie Claude Lemieux swept a backhand past Liut for a 2-1 victory. It would be the first of Lemieux’s three career OT winners.

Amusingly, Lemieux dived when his teammates leaped on top of him in celebration. “I scored a goal like that in junior and my teammates almost killed me,” he said. “I didn’t want to get hurt by my own guys.”

Some rookies obviously handle the pressure of Game Seven just fine. But not all have such a fortunate experience.

Brendan Morrison winces when the subject of his inaugural Game Seven comes up. As a 23-year-old freshman center, he expected his New Jersey Devils to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1999 opening round after finishing first overall in the Eastern Conference for the third straight year. But a scoring machine named Jaromir Jagr foiled those plans, keying the Pens to an upset 4-2 win in Game Seven despite a wonky groin.

“Obviously there was a little tentativeness at first, a little bit of not wanting to make a mistake,” Morrison recalled about his club’s approach. “In that game we were too tentative. We didn’t have that excitement that you need. Pittsburgh got a couple of goals up on us. They got the lead on us and they played well. We just couldn’t get anything going because we didn’t go after them.”

Morrison knows what advice he would give his current teammates in Vancouver if they should ever find themselves in a Game Seven situation: “Just go out there with the mindset that you can make a difference every shift. You don’t know when there could be a turning point in the game, so you have to be prepared every minute.”

Players universally agree that it’s important to strike a balance between getting keyed up and relaxing enough to deliver a good performance. There’s no need to blast “Eye Of The Tiger” in the dressing room before Game Seven. Natural adrenaline and the roar of the crowd will get those legs moving.

Sometimes adrenaline is the only resource left to draw on. That was the case on April 18, 1987 when the New York Islanders visited Washington for a first-round Game Seven confrontation.

This turned into the seventh-longest playoff game in NHL history and the longest Game Seven ever. It ended at 8:42 of the fourth OT period when Pat LaFontaine’s spin-around slapshot eluded Capitals netminder Bob Mason and gave New York a 3-2 victory. It was double heartbreak for the Caps, who wound up squandering a 3-1 series lead.

“It was like playing in a dream,” said Islanders goalie Kelly Hrudey. “I never thought I could face 75 shots and allow just two goals. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

Hrudey would enjoy another unique experience on May 29, 1993. He made a Game Seven start for the Los Angeles Kings against Toronto and watched Wayne Gretzky tally a hat trick, including the winner, and an assist in a 5-4 victory that sent the Kings to the Finals. The loss denied Toronto its chance to become the first team in NHL history to win three consecutive seven-game playoff series in one year. The Great One still cites this as the best game he ever played in the NHL.

Gretzky’s good friend Mark Messier participated in two of the most pressure-packed Game Sevens in modern history. First, Messier scored the tying goal in the last game of the 1987 Stanley Cup Final against Philadelphia, as he, Gretzky and their Edmonton Oiler mates overcame the goaltending brilliance of Ron Hextall for a 3-1 decision.

That was a huge moment for an Oilers team that had missed its chance for a three-peat the year before. “It’s like losing your house and then working hard enough to get the money to get it back,” defenseman Charlie Huddy commented afterwards.

Seven years later, Messier suited up for the New York Rangers and had to shoulder 54 years of playoff disappointments heading into Game Seven of the Finals versus the Vancouver Canucks. The Big Apple media and fan scrutiny was beyond belief. Newspaper headlines in Manhattan read “CUP OR CHOKE” or “Jinx May Be Exercised or May Be Exercised.”

It was Messier who rose up to “slay the dragon,” in his words, scoring the winner in a heartstopping 3-2 finale. As the Broadway Blueshirts circled the ice brandishing the Cup, a fan held up a sign: “Now I Can Die In Peace.”

Defenseman Doug Lidster had joined the Rangers that year after spending most of his career with the Canucks. “I feel for the guys in the other dressing room,” he said. “I know they gave it everything they had. It’s unfortunate there can’t be two champions.”

To this day, Vancouver’s Trevor Linden says beating Toronto in the 1994 semi-finals was the highlight of his career, not this Game Seven, because it’s still too painful to dwell on: “We were 60 minutes away from winning it all. You don’t get in that spot very often.”

It was especially tough to accept after the Canucks had previously rallied from a 3-1 deficit against Calgary in the first round, with Pavel Bure scoring a dazzling OT breakaway goal on Mike Vernon in Game Seven.

In the last game against New York, Bure was seen to kick the bench in frustration when he came off after missing a glorious chance. Center Cliff Ronning’s eyes were red-rimmed and his voice trembled uncontrollably as he did TV interviews afterwards.

But that’s the way Game Seven has to be. One step from heaven, a heartbeat from hell.

John Ferguson and Ray Bourque know what it’s all about. What do these two have in common? Both the enforcer of the 1960’s and the all-star defenseman of the 1980’s and 90’s had the experience of losing playoff Game Sevens. But even more significantly, both chose to retire after winning the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Final, Ferguson in 1971 with Montreal and Bourque 30 years later with Colorado.

“You don’t know how it’s going to feel when it finally happens,” said Bourque of his final trip to the seventh heaven. “Then all of a sudden there were all these feelings of joy.”

According to Ferguson, some things in hockey don’t change, regardless of eras, styles of play or media coverage: “There’s really no difference. The feeling’s just the same. The atmosphere’s just the same.”

Who’s the Man?

“If you could pick any player, past or present, for a Game Seven in the playoffs, who would it be?” Here’s how some cornerstones of the last three Cup champions answered that question:

Scott Stevens, New Jersey Devils: “I would love to have Joe Nieuwendyk with me. He always picks it up in the playoffs. He has won the Conn Smythe, and he was a huge part of winning that Cup in 1999.”

Peter Forsberg, Colorado Avalanche: “I’d have to go with Patrick Roy. He’s been great for us in so many Game Sevens. He’s been there in the big games and he knows what it takes to win.”

Brett Hull, Detroit Red Wings: “Wayne Gretzky, because he’s the best.”

Sevens Go with Semis

In the past 10 years (1993-2002), 36 Game Sevens have taken place. Interestingly, the highest proportion occurred in the third round, where the conference conquerors caught their second wind.

First round: 18 out of 80 series
Second round: 9 out of 40 series
Third round: 7 out of 20 series
Fourth round: 2 out of 10 series

Seven Great Game Sevens

April 26, 1975: Chico Resch posts 1-0 shutout for Islanders, who defeat Pittsburgh in quarter-finals and become second team in NHL history to rally from 3-0 series deficit

April 15, 1989: Wayne Gretzky leads L.A. past former Oilers teammates in 6-3 victory after Kings trailed 3-1 in series

April 16, 1991: Esa Tikkanen’s OT winner gives Edmonton 5-4 win over Calgary in first round, and Don Cherry calls it “best series he’s ever seen”

May 14, 1993: Underdog Islanders beat Penguins 4-3 in OT on David Volek’s goal, killing Pittsburgh’s bid for three straight Cups

May 27, 1994: Stephane Matteau scores in double OT for 2-1 Rangers win over Devils, sending New York to Finals

May 4, 1998: Curtis Joseph dazzles with second straight shutout as Oilers eliminate Avalanche in first round

May 26, 2000: New Jersey heads for finals after beating Philadelphia 2-1, coming back from 3-1 series deficit in game noted for Scott Stevens’s crushing hit on Eric Lindros

Most Game Sevens Among Active Players

Patrick Roy: 12
Scott Stevens: 11
Doug Gilmour: 11
Ken Daneyko: 10
Al MacInnis: 10