With 6-foot-7, 250-pound Montral Canadiens defenseman Hal Gill out of the lineup with a deep cut on his leg, Sidney Crosby finally got the little bit of open ice he needed to get in front of the net, bat a rebound out of midair and end his series-long goal-scoring drought.
Unfortunately for the Pittsburgh Penguins, that constituted the majority of what went their way in Game 6.
The Canadiens stared down elimination for the fourth time this spring and didn't blink. With Monday's 4-3 win, they'll head back to Pittsburgh on Wednesday with a chance to slay their second consecutive giant of this year's playoffs — first, the President's Trophy-winning Washington Capitals, and now, perhaps, the defending Stanley Cup champions.
What would turn out to be a very good night for the Canadiens started just 1:13 into the contest, when they exploited a turnover by Penguins defenseman Kris Letang for Mike Cammalleri's league-leading 10th goal of the postseason. Crosby's tally evened things up, and Letang redeemed himself early in the second with a nice move around a Habs defender to snap one past Montreal netminder Jaroslav Halak.
Pittsburgh briefly had the 2-1 lead, but, from then on, it was all Canadiens.
"I think we've had a lead in every game we've lost in this series," said Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik. "It's a credit to them; it's a team that works hard and they don't seem to get too rattled when they're behind."
It was the Habs using their speed to go on a blueline-to-blueline rush that ended with Cammalleri backhanding his second goal of the night past the Penguins' Marc-Andre Fleury. It was defenseman Jaroslav Spacek, in his first game since leaving the Capitals series with a virus, blasting a go-ahead goal past a screened Fleury just two and a half minutes later.
"I saw it going to the point, I saw him wind up, and I just didn't see the puck," Fleury told FOX Sports Pittsburgh. "And then it was going by."
"Obviously, that was the point that they got back in the game, their fans got in the game, and now we had the tough task of coming from behind," added Penguins coach Dan Bylsma.
It was Halak coming up big when he needed to — and getting some help from a goaltender's best friends, with at least three Pittsburgh shots clanking off the goalposts in the second period. It was Montreal capitalizing on the Penguins' failure to manage the puck and taking advantage of the resulting odd-man rushes. It was the Habs sacrificing their bodies, like defenseman Travis Moen taking a shot to the ribs in the third to stop Evgeni Malkin's scoring chance.
It was the Penguins outshooting the Canadiens, 37-25, pressuring for long periods of time in the offensive zone, but frequently encountering four or five bleu, blanc et rouge sweaters collapsing in front of Halak. And it was the Habs' Maxim Lapierre deking out Pittsburgh defenseman Alex Goligoski along the boards, dancing across the crease to the far side of the net and putting it home for the 4-2 lead, all but ending the Penguins' chances of closing out the series.
"That one hurt," Fleury said.
The Penguins didn't go down without a fight, however.
Crosby contributed a nice defensive play, staying with the Habs' Andrei Kostitsyn as he crossed the Penguins' crease and lifting his stick to limit the scoring chance. Pittsburgh sacrificed bodies, too, blocking 20 shots to Montreal's 21, and forced the Habs into penalties, earning five opportunities on the power play. And the Penguins kept coming, even with the late, two-goal deficit, as Bill Guerin pulled his team within a goal with 1:24 remaining.
At the final buzzer, however, the more desperate team found a way to get it done.
"So much is put on us, that we're not doing this or that, but this is a pretty good hockey team we're playing," Orpik said. "They only squeezed in [with the eighth playoff seed] because they had a lot of injuries, but they play a really good team game. I think a little more credit's got to be given to the team we're playing against here."
The Penguins won two Game 7s on the road last year, in Washington and Detroit — the latter with nothing less than the Stanley Cup on the line.
Now Montreal has the opportunity to turn out the lights at Mellon Arena Wednesday by doing the same.
"The experience is a good thing to draw upon, and we have that," Bylsma said. "But it's also now down to one game, and they have experience as well from Round 1, and a similar situation on the road. I'm not going to give any team an upper hand in that regard.
"This is one game to see who moves on to the conference final, and we have to mentally refocus and regroup and put our best game out there for Game 7."
