Wednesday’s Southern Conference finals game was like a James Bond movie. Athens had Paris right where they wanted them: an Athens victory would have ended the series and finished off Paris for the year. Three goals down with less than 12 minutes to play, it looked like there was no escape for the defending champion Rouge Eiffels. But,  (cue James Bond theme song) Nicklas Kronwall was called for a tripping penalty and he left the ice surface and went to penalty box, fully expecting Paris to die in his absence, thereby repeating the same mistake Goldfinger made. That was all the opening Michel Therrien’s men needed to perform their miraculous escape from certain playoff death. On the powerplay, Alexander Semin scored his 007th goal of the playoffs, Then 41 seconds after the next faceoff, Paris’ Josef Vasicek delivered a roundhouse kick to Athens’ solar plexus, his 4th of the post season, and Joffrey Lupul struck with a karate chop to the back of the neck by scoring his 9th playoff goal just 19 seconds later and suddenly the game was tied. Three goals in 60 seconds and Cam Ward and his Greek teammates were woozy. They made it to overtime, but couldn’t get a single shot on the Paris goal, and then about 3 minutes into overtime, Evgeny Malkin picked up a loose puck at the Athens blueline, swooped along the boards and behind the Greek net and with Kronwall draped across his back, pushed a one-handed pass across the goal mouth to Lupul who was crashing the net. Lupul slammed it past Ward and the comeback was complete. Perhaps 007 has a little French in him.

The truth is, as Paris GM Ralph Booth admitted, the Eiffels probably didn’t deserve to win Wednesday. Athens outshot Paris 31-14 over the first two periods and 41-25 for the game, and when Ryan O’Reilly scored his second goal of the game – and 7th of the playoffs – in the third period, he put the Greeks up 5-2. Paris gave Athens 9 powerplay opportunities and the Greeks scored on 2 of them. Travis Hamonic of Paris blocked 4 shots, but took two penalties to leave his team shorthanded for a total of 7 minutes. Athens’ top line of David Backes, Jason Pominville and Scott Hartnell seemed anxious to end the series, playing a high-speed, aggressive game combining for 12 shots on goal and 13 hits, but they ended up minus 3 somehow. Four Paris players tallied two points each and 6 more scored one point to provide a balanced attack on Ward.

The teams will play tonight in Paris, and one of their seasons will end. They other will advance to play Moscow for the third-ever EURO Cup.