The joy of the Cup

The Stanley Cup playoffs started last night. Here, the local Wild lost a helluva game, 3-2 in sudden death overtime to Colorado.

Minnesota came out flying in front of a big home crowd but the Colorado goalie held tough. As the game went on, the Avs got their feet straightened out and took a 2-0 lead after two periods. Then, Minnesota had a quick outburst, scored twice and the joint was alive.

With the game tied 2-2 late, a Minnesota guy fell on the puck in the crease. That's a penalty shot, the rarest of plays at most times. It's almost unheard of to see one with two minutes to go in a tie game.

A penalty shot is the simplest of plays -- it's one guy against the goalie on a breakaway. In theory, this should favor the shooter but the stats say just the opposite. 19,000 people held their breath and didn't exhale until the Minnesota goalie made the save.

There is something about overtime in the Stanley Cup that is absolutely riveting. In basketball, you can have a 5-0 run and still lose the game by a large margin in an overtime period. But in the Stanley Cup, one mistake and you're toast. That's why they call it sudden death.

As this game went into overtime, you would have thought Minnesota would have the momentum. But it didn't look that way. The Wild had one good scoring chance but the Avs had many more and eventually scored 11 minutes into the game. When Joe Sakic scored the goal, the silence was deafening. People simply sighed to themselves and went home.

It was riveting television and great fun to watch ... unless you had an attachment to one of the teams playing.

There's only two months to go. Can't wait for the next game.