Game Six: If No-One Speaks Of Remarkable Things...

"Just one more breath, I beg you please
Just one more step, my knees are weak
My heart is sturdy but it needs you to survive"
Dashboard Confessional: "Reason to Believe"

Sweet Jesus Christ. I can't take any more. If you don't hear from me after Friday night for more than a day or two, whatever the result, then worry a little. There is at least a five percent chance the Pens have killed me.

I swore not to watch last night-mainly because I didn't want to ruin my birthday with a vision of the Wings once again lifting the cup, which, after Saturday's shower of faeces from the Pens, particularly in the second period, looked something of a formality. Then Jordan Staal scored, and hope returned. Then Tyler Kennedy made a play out of nothing, and just briefly, I and every other Pens fan began to hope that just maybe, there was a Game Seven in this thing after all.

Then Kris Draper (Kris....bloody...Draper!) scored to make it two-one, and suddenly the fear returned in all its vomit-inducing, dry-mouthed, weak-kneed fury. Shot after shot rained in on Fleury, and shot after shot got turned away. Even before the equaliser, Zetterberg tinged one off the post and for half-a-second I knew despair as I thought it had gone in, because I was as certain as of anything in my life that, if this game went to overtime, the cup was going to Detroit.

But still the Pens hung on. Until two minutes that, I swear by the hockey gods, came as close to causing my death from a heart attack as anything ever will, and nearly killed me on the same day as I'd been born twenty-five years before.

First came Pavel Datsyuk's gorgeous, made-in-hockey-heaven pass to Dan Cleary, which I couldn't help but admire even as I watched the big Newfoundlander attempt to destroy the dreams of the black-and-white half of Pennsylvania. In the second or two of his approach, I promised anything to the hockey deities, up to and including my firstborn, if Fleury stopped it. He did, and the thump of puck hitting left pad was like the hammer of the hockey gods crashing down. Surely that was it.

But no. The Wings kept coming, the clock in the corner of the screen moved like a sloth through treacle, and with twenty seconds to go, all hell broke loose.

With Fleury out of position and the puck sitting on the stick of Johan Franzen, my eyes widened in horror-this was it. The final, vital break through the Pens defence, and the spirit-crusher which would win the Wings the Cup in OT. As the Swede shot, my heart stopped...and didn't beat again for fifteen long, even eternal seconds, even as Rob Scuderi somehow got in the way with one of the greatest pieces of desperation defending you or I will ever see. It only started again at the final hooter.

God, I'm dreading game seven...

But even so, there is a fierce hope. We saw the hockey gods manifest themselves in all their cruel, heartless yet glorious beauty through Rob Scuderi last night. Next game, as is customary at this time of year, they'll pick someone else to do their work, and the Cup will be won.

For the sake of my bleeding and bruised soul, I hope it's a Penguin.

Let's go Pens...