Game 7 of Final: The ultimate all-or-nothing contest

There is nothing in sports to rival a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. For a hockey fan, it's like waiting for Christmas -- the big day seems to take forever to come -- but when it does, it's well worth the wait.

Christmas comes once a year, but a seven-game Final series happen about as infrequently. Since the NHL's first expansion in 1967, the championship round has gone the distance just eight times, the last in 2009 when Pittsburgh beat Detroit 2-1 in Game 7. If the Stanley Cup Final really is the NHL's two best teams facing off for the championship, it seems logical that there would be more than eight seven-gamers in a span of 44 years -- after all, baseball's World Series has gone the distance 14 times in the same span (though not since 2002).

But baseball has just eight teams in the postseason and only two rounds of playoffs before the World Series, so there's a much smaller likelihood of upsets in the early going. In contrast, with three rounds and potentially 21 games to play just to get to the Final, at least one of the teams is often worn out from the journey.

"Just getting to the Final is a grueling trip," said Ken Daneyko, whose New Jersey Devils lost its bid to repeat as champions in 2001 in a seven-game final against Colorado, but who retired two years later with a third Cup ring when the Devils outlasted Anaheim in seven games in 2003. "You've got to win three seven-game series just to get there, and there are a lot of Game 7s within the conference. By the time you get to the Stanley Cup Final, one of the teams is often worn down. The other team often has a little more juice left in the tank than the other. That's why the Finals usually don't go to seven games."

Of the eight previous Final series that have gone the distance since expansion, only two (1987 and 2001) have matched the regular-season conference champs.

"There should be more," said Ron Hextall, whose goaltending carried the 1987 Philadelphia Flyers to the limit against Edmonton before the Oilers won the Cup, "In theory, you've got the best teams in the sport. It's the pinnacle of the game. I wish there were more."

1971: Montreal's Long-shot Victory

Jacques Lemaire is so well known for his defensive style of coaching that it's easy to forget he had one of the NHL's most feared shots during his playing days. But for all his brilliance, his best-remembered goal is a shot that never should have gone in. In Game 7 of the 1971 Final, the Chicago Blackhawks led 2-0 late in the second period and appeared to have the game (and the Cup) in hand until Lemaire teed up a shot from center ice late in the second period.

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