Logan Couture of the San Jose Sharks celebrates after scoring a goal against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 5.Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
On a night when the Pittsburgh Penguins were poised to celebrate another Stanley Cup championship, Martin Jones was there, playing the role of spoil sport. "Like wall," is the way former San Jose Sharks' great Arturs Irbe liked to describe the play of a goalie that flat-out stole a game, and that was Jones, making save after unbelievable save.
In all, Jones finished Thursday night's game against the Penguins with 44 saves on 46 shots, a star turn in the San Jose goal that led his team a 4-2 victory over the Penguins and kept them alive to fight another day.
Jones's performance, coupled with a 40-save performance in Game 3 of the series, made him the first goaltender in the NHL's expansion era to register multiple 40-plus save victories within one Stanley Cup final.
"We needed some big-game performances from guys," said Sharks' coach Peter DeBoer. "Jonesy was one of those guys."
For the Penguins, it was an unsettling result from a game where you couldn't find a lot of fault in their play. Pittsburgh's fans came out in the mood to party – tens of thousands of them, anxious to celebrate the first major professional sports championship on home turf since the 1960 Pirates won the World Series.
They bid up ticket prices on the secondary market and anybody that couldn't gain admittance to the CONSOL Energy Centre amassed outside, creating a giant street party, where the mood ebbed and flowed with the twists and turns of a crazily entertaining game, which wasn't decided until Joe Pavelski scored an empty-net goal in the second-to-last minute of play.
The visiting Sharks scored twice in the first three minutes on goals by Brent Burns and Logan Couture, which gave them a lead for the first time in the series.
Two goals in a 22-second span by the Penguins tied with game only 5:06 into the first, the fastest four goals from the start of a game in Stanley Cup final history.
Pittsburgh pushed. San Jose pushed back. At 2-2, the Sharks regained the lead on Melker Karlsson's goal at the 14:37 mark of the first, and remarkably, that stood up as the eventual winner, with Pittsburgh unable to get another one past Jones.
"Obviously it's tough when you get a two-goal lead and it's gone in a matter of a minute, minute and a half," said Couture. "But be calm, get back out there, get another good shift. We were able to score, Melker gave us the lead again. Jonesy did the rest."
Offensively, San Jose received a strong overall performance from Couture's line. Couture had three first-period points to extend his lead atop the post-season scoring list. His 29 overall points are tied for the fourth most by any player within a single playoff year dating back to 1997.
Patrick Marleau had a good night along the boards. Burns played a wild aggressive game. On his opening goal, he was down below the goal line, circled in front and fired a shot short side that beat Murray.
It was the sort of relaxed, reckless play that you saw a lot of from San Jose in the first three rounds.
But it didn't last and by the time it got to 2-2, the Penguins were carrying the momentum and were a little unlucky on a subsequent first-period power-play when both Phil Kessel and Chris Kunitz plunked shots off the goalpost. San Jose looked completely rattled – until a shift in the 15th minute in which Couture made a smart pass to Karlsson, who slipped a shot past Matt Murray in the Penguins goal.
Suddenly, San Jose was ahead again, with three goals on five shots against Murray who, for perhaps the first time in these playoffs, started looking like a nervous rookie. Murray made his NHL debut in December and became the starter after Marc-Andre Fleury suffered a late-season concussion. His out-of-nowhere success story almost rivals that of Ken Dryden's back in 1971. But Murray wasn't the only Penguins' player who was spooked by the moment in the early stages of the game.
The psychology approaching a possible Stanley Cup-clinching scenario is always fraught with peril. Players have family and friends arriving in town, anticipating the chance to celebrate a championship. For players, keeping the focus on the task at hand – winning one more game – amid all the distractions can be a tall task.
"I thought our team as a whole was a little bit unsettled at the first part of the game, but we settled in fast," said Penguins' coach Mike Sullivan. "Obviously we didn't have the start that we would have liked. But I really liked the fact that we battled back as quick as we did, making it a 2-2 game right away. The reality is there's a lot of hockey left at that point to be played.
"I thought Matt settled in as the game went on, just like our team."
DeBoer and Jones, meanwhile, were both new to San Jose this year, though they spent a month together at the world championships last season, where Jones backed up Mike Smith on Canada's gold-medal-winning team. DeBoer got a taste then of Jones' composure, which has served him so well throughout these playoffs.
"Right away you recognized his composure, how calm and cool he was," said DeBoer, postgame. "Then the big question was whether there was a competitive edge there with that composure. That's always the million-dollar question.
"The season, it didn't start as smoothly for any of us as we wanted. I mean, we were winning one, losing one, including him. Just kept battling and battling, throwing him out there, and he kept finding a way. I think we all recognized then that he had that competitive edge, too, that is critical."
The goal, outlined by DeBoer on the morning of Game 5, was to force everybody involved in the Stanley Cup circus to climb back on a plane and reconvene in San Jose Sunday night for Game 6, with the Penguins' lead now reduced to 3-2.
"Every game has been really close," said Burns. "Going forward, it's going to be the same thing. They're good. We're good. It's going to be tight."