GAME FIVE RECAP (Penguins 4, Capitals 3)

Through five games, this series has been better than advertised. I'm colored by the to-date outcomes, obviously, but the closeness of the games (four one-goal games and one two-goal finish, with two ending in overtime), the lead changes and late tying goals have made this a remarkable week of playoff games. The league's marquee players have taken turns showing each other up. Sidney Crosby was silent in Game Five, but the slack was picked up by the lines centered by Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal. And what more can you say about Ovechkin? Rob Scuderi has been very, very effective in containing him, at one point perfectly breaking up a Ovechkin partial breakaway without taking a penalty, but the guy still scored two goals, including the tying goal with four minutes to go. His first goal was scored when Brooks Orpik was on the ice and backed up a step or two away from Ovechkin, which gave him all the time, space and screen he needed to fire off a shot, while the tying goal was scored while Scuderi was on the ice, but Ovechkin moved to the right side to get away from him. The guy is unbelievable. If his teammate Alexander Semin was even remotely involved in the series, the Penguins wouldn't be ahead.Don't look now, but Miro Satan has reinvented himself as a playmaker. For the second game in a row, he made a perfect pass to set up a goal.

Referees don't like to call penalties in overtime in general, but in certain situations it's compelled or the game becomes a joke. Along similar lines, while it was a swallow-the-whistles game from the start and there were only three regulation penalties called, if the referees had ignored the obvious too-many-men infraction the Penguins committed, it would have been a mockery. It really doesn't matter at what point you are in the game-- a player who is tripped on a breakaway has to draw a penalty, and no one on the Capitals' bench disputes that. The team's owner and several of its vocal supporters think there should have been an interference call right before the Penguins' goal was scored. That call is never, ever made, though.

Here's how it went down: as the Penguins' power play was winding down, Kris Letang made a hurried and ill-advised breakout pass to Crosby that David Steckel was waiting to pick off. Steckel stepped in front of the pass, then entered the Penguins' zone, but didn't skate the puck deep or dump it into the corner. The only reason the game was still being played at this point was because Steckel missed an open net on the Capitals' first shift of overtime. Boyd Gordon, the other penalty-killing forward, broke into the offensive zone, then turned in the slot with his back to the Penguins' net, as if to take a pass. Steckel held it for an instant, then took a slap shot that went wide of the net and richocheted out to the Penguins' Chris Kunitz, who sent to puck up to Malkin. As the puck went wide, Gordon turned his head to follow its patch and he and Phillipe Boucher ran into each other. Boucher didn't alter his path, but when Gordon turned to chase the puck Boucher was in his way. Boucher didn't look like he'd set a pick, but he didn't try to get out of the way, either. Is that penalty called in the regular season? Sometimes, although not if it doesn't appear that Boucher tried to get in Gordon's way. Is that penalty called in the playoffs? No, almost never. Is it called in overtime? Absolutely never. Now pause a moment to reflect on the fact that if Ovechkin doesn't blow up Sergei Gonchar's knee on Friday night, Boucher doesn't get that close to the ice without buying a seat on the glass.

The puck is sent up the ice to Malkin, and Sergei Federov skates backward with Malkin on defense. Federov poke-checks the puck away from Malkin, and it nearly causes Malkin to be offside on himself, but the puck hits his skate and caroms right back to where it needed to be. Malkin takes Federov wide and beats him, then throws a backhander at the net. The rest, as they say, is a random bounce off a well-positioned defenseman.