Blackhawks look to leverage epic triple overtime win in bid for Stanley Cup

There are hockey games and then there are games like Game One of the 2013 Stanley Cup final.

One often has two choices when faced with triple OT. Either go to bed, eat a banana, have another beer, accept the fact that you’ll be late for work tomorrow, and sit back and enjoy. It’s the latter you ought to choose: this is why you watched all year, after all, wasn’t it? This is why you put up with the threat of a season cancellation, and why you came back to the league despite all the vows you’d stay away just to spite the labour dispute, right? When it’s this good, the answer is yes.

All of which to say Game One was an epic, not only for its length, but for the narrative it built. It was close from the beginning, even though Boston took a 3-1 lead into the middle of the third period, thanks to Milan Lucic playing some of the best hockey of his postseason. Chicago battled back, amazingly, almost unbelievably, thanks in part to an errant left skate of Bruins defenceman Andrew Ference which deflected in the tying goal just over 12 minutes into the third.

And then we all sat and waited. Into the third overtime period. Chicago was called for too many men. They killed it off. It happened again. They killed it off. Boston – Tyler Seguin in particular – came close to ending it a few times. He didn’t. Michael Frolik hit the crossbar. On and on it went. Everyone online started talking about that triple overtime Petr Klima goal against an earlier Boston team, in 1990, the longest playoff game in history, when the Edmonton Oilers bested the Bruins at the 55-minute mark of overtime.

We didn’t get quite that far. Just 52 minutes into extra time and after 117 shots were exchanged, Andrew Shaw from the Blackhawks managed to put one home for the winner to take it 4-3. It now stands as the fifth-longest game in NHL playoff history.