So after allowing the tension to do a rolling boil for most of 48 hours, filling the city with the sweet and hot and singular aroma only a Game 7 can emit, the Penguins and the Tampa Bay Lightning looked over the whole distinctive concoction and said, “Naw, give it another 20 minutes.”
They looked again after one period of hockey and decided it just needed another minute or two.
But finally Brian Rust ran out of patience, just as he did two nights before in Florida, when the anxiety became just too much and he barreled into Andrei Vasilevskiy’s kitchen to pounded home the puck that made a Game 7 possible.