The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

It’s overtime. Game 2 at Detroit. Your team came back from down a goal more than halfway through the third.

You are Brian Campbell.

Some facts before we continue: You’re having your best game of the playoffs so far. Unequivocally. By any reasonable metric (except points, I guess), you are blowing away any of your prior 12 games in this postseason, playing on a level that most would not expect of you, because not only are you contributing on offense with an assist and five shots, which is expected of you, but you’re also — and this is the stunning part — carrying the water on defense. You, along with your D partner Brent Seabrook, lead the team in time on ice by a wide margin. You’re doling out hits (well, you have two, but that’s a lot for you), you’re blocking shots (three!) and you’re actually creating turnovers.

Perhaps, you dare yourself to think, people will start seeing you as more than a one-way defenseman, and one that, frankly, plays the wrong end of the rink. Perhaps those that scoff at your contract, which has been more or less hilariously unjustifiable to this point, will be proven wrong. Perhaps you’ll even help your team scrape out a 3-2 overtime win AT THE JOE.

And things are going just fine in overtime too. Detroit drew a penalty, but it was killed with some degree of efficiency (not by you, of course), so no worries. Oh look, here’s an offensive-zone possession.

Whoa! That bouncer was pretty dangerous for Chris Osgood there, but your buddy Patty Kane got it back. Oh look he’s passing to you! This is exciting. It’s fun to play the puck in OT.

Wuh oh here’s Mikael Samuelsson to bother you. No big deal though, he’s not known for…

Oh, you’ve fallen down. That’s not good. There goes the puck. And there goes Samuelsson with Jiri Hudler and Valtteri Filppula the other way. There’s a game-winner. It’s all your fault. Why did anyone ever believe in you?

You are, after all, only Brian Campbell.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 12:31 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.