by Dave Stubbs, The Ottawa Citizen
Jim Pappin probably still sees it in his nightmares, a certain goal that wasn't against the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of the 1971 Stanley Cup final.
The Canadiens were leading Chicago 3-2 with about four minutes to play, the hometown Blackhawks frantically swarming their visitors' net. Chicago defenceman Keith Magnuson was in the slot for some reason, and he ripped a pass from behind the goal off the stick of rookie Montreal goalie Ken Dryden.
The rebound caromed to the right, where Pappin one-timed it for what surely was the game-tying goal.
“Literally between the moment (Magnuson) took the shot and the moment I stopped it, I knew I'd have to make the save and already be moving to stop the rebound,” Dryden said of the sequence in a 2003 interview.
“Usually they're separate and discreet, but this was one movement, where the first part of the save was blocking Magnuson's shot and the second part was throwing out my right leg for what I knew had to come next.”
Dryden was in motion as the puck rebounded to Pappin, the goalie's right pad kicking out toward his right goalpost, and that was exactly where Pappin buried a shot that haunts him to this day on YouTube.
“What I remember, vividly, was the strangled sound,” Dryden recalled. “First of ‘Yaaaayy…' and seeing (Pappin's) arms start to go up in the air… and then his arms and voice stop.
“It seems to me there was some moment (later) that Jim and I were together, with someone else, and he made a passing comment like, ‘I've had to talk about that shot and that save all my life.' And then he laughed.”
Years from now, Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby and Washington goalie Simeon Varlamov might share a similar chuckle, but only Varlamov is laughing now following his entirely incredible save late in Saturday's second period, thievery of the most exquisite kind on the Penguins' star with Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinal tied 2-2.
Crosby converted a return pass from Chris Kunitz on a fast break, whipping the puck along the ice; Varlamov, guessing a shot from Kunitz, pirouetted in the crease and in one of hockey's great mysteries got the blade of his stick on the shot as Crosby wheeled away with his stick rising to celebrate the “goal.”
Dryden, a 23-year-old with six games' regular-season experience, held on to carry the Canadiens to their 17th Stanley Cup. Varlamov, 21, also a veteran of six regular-season NHL games, made 13 more saves in the Capitals' 3-2 victory against the Penguins.
One hundred and eighty feet away that May night 28 years ago was Chicago goaler Tony Esposito. Tony O on Sunday claimed he didn't recall Dryden's historic save — perhaps he had blocked it out? — and said that, in fact, he remembered none of his own many great playoff saves made in 99 career postseason games.
“Only my mistakes, and I made enough of them,” Esposito joked from his home in Tampa, Florida, as he prepared to fly to Chicago for Tuesday's second game in the Blackhawks-Vancouver Canucks Western semifinal.
“If I dream about playing, I always lose. I wake up in a sweat. When I played, I celebrated the good times and they went away, but I still remember the times I blew it as a goaltender.”
The 66-year-old Hall of Famer is shortchanging himself; Esposito won the Calder Trophy, three times the Vezina and led the Blackhawks to two Stanley Cup finals, having broken into the NHL with the Canadiens in 1968-69 and playing 13 games for Montreal before being claimed by Chicago in the '69 intra-league draft.
“I saw Varlamov's save,” he said, still a little in awe of it. “It won them the game. He got fooled on the play like everybody else, but he made an unbelievable recovery. He didn't quit and say, ‘The puck's in the net.' He gave it that second effort and made a tremendous save.
“It's too early to say that stop changed the series. But (Varlamov) made a lot of other key saves, too. He was the best player on the ice.”
Esposito has endured decades of underachieving Windy City hockey, the Blackhawks without a Stanley Cup since 1961. But he's enjoying his alma mater today, a club with the promise of youth that rallied from 3-0 and 2-0 deficits in Vancouver last week, falling just short in Game 1, but winning two nights later to square the series.
Like fellow Blackhawks ambassadors Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, he's delighted by the red carpet rolled out by team owner Rocky Wirtz and president John McDonough, who have embraced the club's long-ignored legends of yesterday while nurturing and promoting the talent of today and tomorrow.
“They're a good, young, aggressive team and pretty solid in net (with Nikolai Khabibulin and backup Cristobal Huet),” Esposito said of these Blackhawks. “They amaze me more all the time. They could have folded like a tent in the first two games, but they came back.”
A playoff workhorse during his 14 postseasons, Esposito expects Huet will only see action if Khabibulin “goes in the tank…. But, when he gets on a roll, he's tough to beat.”
Another former Canadien, Jose Theodore, warms the bench this playoff season behind the Caps' Varlamov.
“But Huet is a much better goalie than the guy in Washington,” Esposito said.
From a distance, Tony O watched the late-season struggles of Canadiens sophomore Carey Price, saying: “He obviously wasn't playing well, the way (Montreal) went down, but it should help him with experience and how to get stronger mentally.”
For now, Esposito is enjoying an intensity that has been sharply dialed up since the playoffs began. There will be many more brilliant saves before the Stanley Cup is awarded next month, if none as glittering as Varlamov's stoning of Crosby.
Or even Ken Dryden's robbery of Jim Pappin.
“It's much more fun, huh?” he said of the postseason. “You could have fallen asleep during many regular season games. I've been to them… oh yes, to quite a few of those. They drift off, maybe get a chance to win the game and then suddenly it was a great night.
“Now, everybody's revved. You know everybody is going to give all they've got.”