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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This story appears in the May 25, 2015, issue of &lt;/em&gt;Sports Illustrated&lt;em&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em &gt;Subscribe to the magazine&amp;nbsp;here.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CBart Crashley,\u201D says Mike (Doc) \u00ADEmrick, pronouncing his favorite name in his favorite game. \u201C&lt;em&gt;Bart Crashley&lt;/em&gt; just &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; like hockey.\u201D Emrick, of course, is the voice of hockey, so nothing sounds more like hockey than Doc Emrick saying &lt;em&gt;Bart Crashley&lt;/em&gt;, unless it is Doc Emrick saying &lt;em&gt;Bart Crashley&lt;/em&gt; in overtime of a Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup playoff game, for the playoffs are the highest form of hockey, and overtime is the highest form of playoff hockey, making overtime of a Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup playoff game\u2014announced\u00AD by Doc Emrick, with the urgency of an \u00ADauctioneer\u2014the quintessential hockey spectacle.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bart Crashley played 140 games as a defenseman in the NHL without ever reaching the postseason. Doc Emrick spent seven years in the bushes before calling his first NHL game in 1980 and has since worked countless playoffs. As the lead play-by-play man for NBC Sports\u2019 coverage of the league, he is so canny and grizzled he can &lt;em&gt;smell&lt;/em&gt; overtime coming. To him, overtime smells like Skippy, but only because a \u00ADpeanut-butter sandwich, prepared by a network staffer, appears unbidden \u00ADbefore&amp;nbsp;Emrick late in the third period of every close game he calls.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fortified with a first-grader\u00AD\u2019s lunch, Emrick called the Game&amp;nbsp;7 overtime between the Rangers and the Capitals on May&amp;nbsp;13, won by New&amp;nbsp;York when center Derek Stepan wristed a rebound past Washington goalie Braden Holtby 11:24 into the extra period. \u201CSome nervous eating going on right now,\u201D Emrick said of his viewers and himself, for what is more excruciating, even for a neutral, than hockey sudden death?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emrick\u2019s late-night snack routine began three years ago, when he asked for a \u00ADpeanut-butter sandwich in the second overtime of another \u00ADCapitals-Rangers playoff game, which winger Marian Gaborik won for New&amp;nbsp;York with a goal in the third OT. \u201CNow they start to make the sandwich as a precaution,\u201D Emrick says. \u201CIt\u2019s nice to have some energy in the case of multiple overtimes.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A man works up a powerful hunger in three OTs. Emrick and then&amp;nbsp;partner Bill Clement famously called Game&amp;nbsp;7 of the Patrick&amp;nbsp;Division semifinals for ESPN on April&amp;nbsp;18\u201319, 1987, when the visiting Islanders needed four overtimes to beat Washington. \u201CDoc and I were starving after the game,\u201D Clement says. \u201CWe finally got out of the building, went to Denny\u2019s, and there was a line out the door. It wasn\u2019t even near the rink, but the bars closed at two, and where do people go when the bars close?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hockey overtime is a Sinatra song, played in the wee small hours, to a dwindling roomful of drunks. \u201CI remember there was a wedding party at the game,\u201D says Clement. \u201CThey left, went to the wedding, then came back hours later during one of the overtimes.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That game\u2014black ties, black eyes\u2014was a master class in \u00ADwhistle-eating by referee Andy Van&amp;nbsp;Hellemond. \u201CHe refused to put a team on the power play,\u201D says Emrick. \u201CAt an intermission he took off his skates, turned one upside down, and [sweat] just rolled out of it.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Under any other \u00ADcircumstances the two principal attractions of Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup playoff \u00ADovertime\u2014swallowed whistles, sudden death\u2014would sound like an alarmist report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But it\u2019s this knife-edged, forced-march, \u00ADzero-sum insanity that makes playoff overtime so frightfully compelling. \u201CEveryone [is] standing, leaning, falling on each other,\u201D says Emrick\u2019s fellow NBC broadcaster, Al Michaels, a Kings season-ticket holder for 23 years. \u201COvertime is this great communal experience.\u201D After emerging drained and frazzled from one L.A. overtime thriller last spring, Michaels called NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and said, \u201CThis is how you need to market your game: It\u2019s the only sport that leaves fans more exhausted than the players.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sudden death is not always sudden and never deadly. Sudden? In 1936 the Montreal Maroons and the Red&amp;nbsp;Wings played six overtime periods in a game that lasted 176 minutes and 30 seconds. Death? The Canadiens won 10 consecutive overtime games in the \u201993 playoffs, one more life than a cat for goalie Patrick Roy.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As happens when mortality impends, everything intensifies in sudden death. Forechecking becomes fivechecking, five holes become six holes. Goals are often scored by men you\u2019ve never heard of and may never hear from again. And so Sabres center Dave Hannan beat Devils goalie Martin Brodeur in the fourth overtime of a scoreless Game&amp;nbsp;6 in their first-round playoff series in 1994, with the game\u2019s 120th shot on goal. \u201CMarty would stop him 40 times out of 42,\u201D says Emrick. \u201CBut Hannan made just the right shot at just the right time.\u201D This good \u00ADfortune\u2014\u00ADHannan had scored six goals in the regular \u00ADseason\u2014is often called puck luck.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Puck luck&lt;/em&gt;, like &lt;em&gt;mukluk&lt;/em&gt;, is Arctic in origin and utility. \u201CYou always say it\u2019s never a bad idea to throw a puck at the net at this time in a game,\u201D Montreal play-by-play man Dan Robertson idly said to his color partner, Sergio Momesso, on TSN&amp;nbsp;690 when the Canadiens and the Senators began overtime last month in Game&amp;nbsp;2 of their \u00ADfirst-round series. \u201CJust throw &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; [at the net],\u201D Momesso concurred. \u201CI scored one once from between the red and blue lines against the Toronto Maple&amp;nbsp;Leafs. Went in five hole.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Momesso was referring to the time in 1990 when he ended overtime in Game&amp;nbsp;3 of the Blues\u2019 \u00ADopening-round series against Toronto with a shot from just inside the red line, but he couldn\u2019t elaborate on the air. As he spoke, Montreal forward Alex Galchenyuk wheeled from the right circle and blindly slapped a bullet that deflected off a defenseman and past Ottawa goalie Andrew Hammond. \u201CThe magical thing of overtime,\u201D says NBC analyst (and SI contributor) Pierre McGuire, \u201Cis that one team can utterly dominate, then the other team comes down and wins it with one shot on goal.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;McGuire (along with color commentator Eddie Olczyk) is Emrick\u2019s frequent late-night sidekick, and together they are the most tireless pairing of a Pierre and a Doc since the Curies. Michaels may have the most famous call in U.S. hockey history, but he\u2019s happily retired from calling Olympic hockey, and not just because &lt;em&gt;Do you believe in miracles?&lt;/em&gt; is untoppable. \u201CAre you crazy?\u201D he says. \u201CDoc Emrick can do the game 20 times better than I could.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While Emrick is upstairs eating peanut butter in OT, McGuire occupies a plexiglass booth between the benches so that he often resembles a contestant in a carnival dunk tank. Before the third overtime of Game&amp;nbsp;5 of the 2008 Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup finals against Detroit, Penguins right&amp;nbsp;wing Petr Sykora announced to McGuire, in his heavily accented English, \u201CYou remember this: I\u2019m gonna score the winner.\u201D Nine minutes and 57 seconds later, Sykora scored the winner.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was a beautiful sequence between the Blackhawks and the Kings in the 2014 Western&amp;nbsp;Conference finals, in the first overtime of Game&amp;nbsp;5. The teams played without pause for seven minutes and 56 seconds. No puck was \u00ADwaffle-boarded out of play, no whistle split the night. There was only the sound of carved ice and held breath. The entire 20-minute\u00AD period took 26 minutes. \u201CI love professional basketball,\u201D says Michaels, \u201Cbut the timeouts suck so much of the drama and tension from the last two minutes.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After Chicago won 5\u20134 in the second overtime, Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville, who has played or coached professionally for 37 years, said, \u201CThat might have been the greatest overtime I\u2019ve seen.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[pagebreak]\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sudden death is&amp;nbsp;a hockey \u00ADcoinage, more than a century old. \u201CHooking, tripping, slashing and slugging made the game at St.&amp;nbsp;Nicholas Rink last night between the \u00ADIrish-American A.C. and the Hockey&amp;nbsp;Club seven the biggest hockey riot that has been played in the amateur league for years,\u201D a breathless (and possibly toothless) correspondent for &lt;em&gt;The&amp;nbsp;New&amp;nbsp;York Times&lt;/em&gt; wrote in 1914. \u201CAt the end of the game the scrapping teams were tied at 1 to&amp;nbsp;1, and after more than five extra minutes of exhausting strife, Mackenzie, the Hockey&amp;nbsp;Club centre, jammed in a \u2018sudden death\u2019 goal, and the champions won by a 2 to 1 score.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A hockey movie called &lt;em&gt;Sudden Death&lt;/em&gt;, set in Pittsburgh and starring Jean-Claude Van&amp;nbsp;Damme, was released in 1995, three years after McGuire\u2019s last season as an assistant with the Penguins. \u201CJay Caufield, our tough guy, played the goalie,\u201D says McGuire, laughing at the nerve of Hollywood. \u201CThe goalie! And he was our goon!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is especially absurd when you consider the supreme athletic grace required of goalies in overtime. It is exceedingly difficult to watch the Rangers\u2019 Henrik Lundqvist try to stay dry in a \u00ADvulcanized-rubber rainstorm. \u201CLiving and dying with every step,\u201D says Michaels, \u201Clike the Great Wallendas on the tightrope.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Game 1 of the first-round series between Chicago and the Predators last month, rookie goalie Scott Darling replaced Blackhawks starter Corey Crawford with his team down 3\u20130 after one period. Darling then shut out Nashville through the next two periods and double&amp;nbsp;overtime as Chicago came back to win 4\u20133. That just doesn\u2019t happen. (\u201CBut it did,\u201D Darling said afterward.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Game 4 of that series was delayed for three minutes while Predators goalie Pekka Rinne tried to locate a puck lost somewhere on his person in the first OT. Having sweat out several pounds, he looked like the love child of Jim Craig and Jenny Craig. As linesman Steve Miller frisked Rinne for the puck, NBC\u2019s Gord Miller said it perfectly: \u201CIt\u2019s like TSA at O\u2019Hare over here.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That game went to triple overtime and was won on a goal by Blackhawks defenseman Brent Seabrook, who spoke afterward in the time-honored\u00AD hockey way that diverts all praise from oneself onto one\u2019s teammates. \u201COur forwards have been doing a great job,\u201D he said. \u201CBicksy, Shawsy, Dez, Vermy, Sharpy.\u2008.\u2008.\u2008.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If these guys sound like the Seven Dwarfs, well, by the end of three overtimes everyone is Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey or Happy, including Doc, who says, \u201CIt\u2019s not nearly as exhausting for us as it is for the players.\u201D Then he says, \u201CAdrenaline doesn\u2019t evaporate in June.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was adrenaline that carried the 56-year-old Quenneville from an 8:45&amp;nbsp;p.m. start to the conclusion of triple&amp;nbsp;overtime at 1:16&amp;nbsp;a.m. \u201CI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever played a game this late,\u201D Coach&amp;nbsp;Q said after that game, though adrenaline isn\u2019t the only force animating legs and nerves at that hour. McGuire called the fourth-longest game in NHL \u00ADhistory\u2014a five-overtime Ducks win over the Stars in 2003\u2014without access to a bathroom. Of his own years playing and broadcasting, Clement says solemnly, \u201CI can\u2019t tell you the number of times my bladder has been challenged beyond what I thought it could handle.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The same late night that the Hawks beat the Preds in triple&amp;nbsp;OT, the Caps beat the Isles in overtime, on a goal by Nicklas Backstrom, in Nassau&amp;nbsp;Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which is called the barn, like every other rink in North&amp;nbsp;America. \u201CWhen you win as a road team, it\u2019s gonna be quiet in the barn,\u201D Backstrom said of his game-winner\u00AD.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But unlike farmers, who also toil in barns before sunup, hockey players receive a form of overtime pay. \u201CJohn Davidson made it to the Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup finals [as the Rangers\u2019 goalie] in 1979, and he said that a couple weeks later, after the hoopla was over, he got a letter from the NHL and it was a check!\u201D says Emrick. \u201CAnd he said, \u2018I forgot we got paid,\u2019 he was so immersed in competing. But the winner now gets somewhere around $150,000 for eight weeks\u2019 work. And they never think about&amp;nbsp;it.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2003, New Jersey won the Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup on June&amp;nbsp;9. Center John Madden told Emrick that it was the Fourth&amp;nbsp;of&amp;nbsp;July before he got out of bed and didn\u2019t hurt. Days after Anaheim won it all in 2007, the Ducks\u2019 Sean O\u2019Donnell realized that \u00ADeverything\u2014his shoulder, elbow, neck, knees\u2014was in pain. But all he had to do was play. Michaels watched every Kings playoff game last year. \u201CAnd the next morning,\u201D he says, \u201CI always felt like I was in a car wreck.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Though never painless, sudden death is sometimes sudden. In April, Islanders center John Tavares scored against the Capitals 15 seconds into OT, giving Emrick time to say only, \u201CTavares!\u201D and\u2014after 20 seconds of goal horn\u2014\u201CBedlam\u00AD!\u201D The shortest playoff overtime on record ended when Brian Skrudland scored in nine seconds for the Canadiens in 1986, though hockey\u2019s most celebrated overtime didn\u2019t last much longer.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bobby Orr\u2019s Cup-winning\u00AD goal just 40 seconds into overtime against St.&amp;nbsp;Louis in 1970 is immortalized in hockey\u2019s most famous photo. In the picture Orr is soaring, goalie Glenn Hall is falling. \u201CThe longer you play in overtime, the more it becomes a trek through the desert,\u201D says Clement, \u201Cand you can see what looks like an oasis up ahead. But only the winning team discovers the oasis. The losing team discovers the mirage.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or as Emrick says, \u201COne man\u2019s floor, another man\u2019s ceiling.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s the floor\u2014the mirage, the sudden death\u2014that\u2019s most poignant. In the early 1970s announcer Curt Gowdy tried to rebrand sudden death as \u201Csudden victory.\u201D Nobody bought it. As Michaels says, \u201CSudden death is the perfect phrase.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the loser the overtime goal that ends the Stanley&amp;nbsp;Cup finals is the closest that sudden death comes to real death. Except real death is sometimes a blessing, and sudden death never is. \u201CThere is zero positive takeaway from losing a long overtime game,\u201D Clement notes. So it\u2019s like death, but sometimes worse\u2014a death that comes not with a white light, but a red one.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/nhl/2015/05/20/stanley-cup-playoffs-overtime-games-best-sports-illustrated-story-steve-rushin>