Five years after the Penguins started spiraling into a sordid playoff history, a history at its most vexing and twisted for Game 7s in the place they call home, you may now pronounce all of that officially over, dead and gone, as the new house Lemieux built is finally ready for the Stanley Cup.


For all of their brilliance, resilience, and unflagging faith in themselves and their common goal, the Penguins might not have produced a Game 7 star on Thursday night as incandescent as the building, by which I mean the people in the seats, who generated an atmosphere so perfect for the special urgency of ultimate playoff hockey that it nearly made head coach Mike Sullivan’s voice crack trying to describe it.


“I thought it was incredible,” Sullivan began. “The third period, it was electric. It was the loudest that I’ve heard a building in all the years I’ve been associated with this league. It was to the point where we had to scream to the players as to who was up next.”.............

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