On Frozen Blog

Even in the post-lockout NHL, staring at a 2-0 deficit during the second intermission is daunting. Seated next to Gus, and having absorbed two periods of the Caps outshooting and outplaying the Isles but watching bounces bumfuzzle the Caps — cosmic justice for our rudely unmerited victory on the Island 10 days ago, I thought — I told my bloggermate, “It would take a small miracle, but if they could just pull a point out of this mess.”
In point of fact, a frenzied and determined Caps’ team made the third-period comeback look rather easy: it was knotted up at 2 well before the 10-minute mark of the stanza.
But as the opposing centers took the center-ice draw in a sudden deadlock, I turned again to Gus and said, “The hardest part isn’t necessarily evening things up, it’s taking the next step, actually overcoming, and stealing a game with a full-on effort throughout the final frame.”
I’ve watched I think 10,000 hockey games in my life, perhaps more. I’ve seen comebacks precisely like the Caps’ last night a couple of hundred times. Ninety three times out of 100, I’d venture, the comeback kids valiantly steady themselves and soar the spirits of the home partisans to the stratosphere, only, utlimately, to trip themselves up, lose, and labor in vain.
Captain Chris Clark, behind Rick DiPietro’s net and the puck a harmless 199 feet, 9 inches from Olie Kolzig, tripped up an Isles checker while his team was in frenzy’s full flight . . . and with that error sirened the end of the comeback. I said as much to Gus as no. 17 skated to the sin bin; he didn’t dispute me. It happens almost every time. It was the absolute worst place on the ice to take a penalty at the very worst time. A mad comeback’s energy suddenly screeched sullen and silent. Next you could hear a subtle groan among the hockey cognescenti in their seats.
The recognition.
Some in the Verizon Center stands filed out last night thinking of softies that slithered past and humiliated Kolzig. They were soft, yes. They hurt, certainly. But they weren’t as determinative as the Clark miscue.
The threatening intruder snake had been boot-stomped into compliance by the Russian snake-charmer wearing no. 8. (We in the stands were rather charmed as well.) It was the duty of his teammates — all of them — not to let their Bauers up off the head of the snake.
Two minutes for tripping.
The viper recoiled.
Hockey teams like the Isles on the receiving end of such savage surges are truly helpless. Lines change among the dominators but the ice remains tilted. The coaching staffs of the beleaguered can exhort, reassure, toss towels or water bottles, it matters none. It’s called hockey’s momentum, and in third periods it’s directed at defying death — losing. Which may make it so powerful, so unprecedented to the rest of the earlier action. It’s a natural force, a Force 10 of fury.
And it can be undone in an instant.