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Teams that get close to the Stanley Cup final, but don’t quite make it, inevitably spend the next few months wondering how things could have been different.

If they fail to advance, the Tampa Bay Lightning can start by lamenting the fact they lost two home games to Pittsburgh, including and especially last night’s potential series-clincher. If the Penguins do not prevail in Game 7, it’ll be because they managed to lose three times at home. We’ll see about San Jose and St. Louis, but the story is bound to be the same no matter which team comes out of the Western Conference. That’s because the Blues and the Sharks have also taken turns flopping at home.

In Game 5, St. Louis held a pair of one-goal leads in front of a friendly crowd but couldn’t score the knockout goal that might have changed everything. The Blues hung on to grab the first game in St. Louis, but a 2-0 series lead, which would have been huge against a San Jose team that had a losing record at home during the season, didn’t come close to materializing as the Sharks dominated 4-0 for a road split.

Tonight, the Sharks take their turn at ending the series with a win at home. It would be their seventh of the playoffs, so never mind what happened at SAP Centre all season, I guess. If San Jose can’t close out St. Louis, the Blues will try to make amends for their playoff struggles on home ice, and in a seventh game, that would supposedly be a greater advantage than we’ve seen so far, such as it is.

In the Stanley Cup playoffs, it helps to win on the road - it is essential to win at home. “Thumbs down” to the number of times that hasn’t happened.
 

Rules of Engagement

In the most recent one, at Tampa Bay last night, the Penguins were much the better team - for two periods, anyway - and that’s just as well, because otherwise, it might have been said that a crucial sixth game of the Eastern Conference final was decided by the makers of two silly rules. Okay, it can still be said.

The Lightning’s apparent 1-0 lead was wiped out by one of those razor-thin offside challenges that found one skate of a Tampa Bay attacker off the ice at the blue line. Technically, according to the way the offside rule is written, the play should have been stopped, or, as it happened, wiped out by video review.

Embedded ImageLogically, that is no one’s idea of a true offside play, and goals don’t need to be cancelled because of it and a new, sensible interpretation of offside should be drafted.

Tampa Bay later surrendered the first goal, in large part due to a delay of game penalty assessed to Victor Hedman for shooting the puck the length of the ice and over the glass. It was flukey, and obviously not intentional, and not deserving of a penalty if referees were able to do what they’re paid to do - exercise their judgment. The NHL chooses too many ways to remove that from their workload, and that’s the worst one.

At the very least, it could be decided that penalties for shooting the puck over the glass accidentally should not be imposed if the offending team is already one man short.

“Thumbs up” to the Penguins for being the deserving winners they were. “Thumbs down” to the help they received.