Fans in Paris cheer on the Rouges Eiffels. We’ll have to ask our Minsk GM what the sign says.
Paris fans hope last round’s near-death experience taught the Rouge Eiffels players a lesson about playing to the end. After winning 5-4 Wednesday on a Josef Vasicek overtime goal, the Eiffels are now up 2-0 in the Finals against Moscow.
But they were up 2-0 in the Southern Conference finals against Athens two weeks ago and had to pull off a miraculous escape to keep their season going. The current series shifts to Moscow now and Spartak coach Glen Gulutzan will have the last change available to him if he wants to match lines. Neither team has an injury to contend with.
In Game 2, Moscow and Anze Kopitar came out strong, with the Slovenian getting an assist on Andrei Markov’s powerplay goal to open the scoring and then he scored one of his own while penalty killing. Unfortunately for the visiting Spartak team, Alex Pietrangelo of Paris scored later in the powerplay to cut the lead to 2-1. In the second period, the story was Paris netminder Tuukka Rask. The fabulous Finn turned aside all 19 Moscow shots that period and as a bonus, Corey Perry scored his 8th of the playoffs to send the teams into the dressing rooms tied 2-2 after two periods. To that point, Moscow held a 35-19 advantage in shots on goal. And just 20 seconds into the third period, Moscow scored on the powerplay again, Duncan Keith getting the goal, and Paris was in catch-up mode. Paris then played much better and wound up outshooting Moscow 17-9 in the third period. Evgeny Malkin and Travis Hamonic scored goals and Paris was in the lead for the first time in the game with 7:41 to play. In the final minute, Gulutzan pulled goalie Jaroslav Halak and good fortune struck. Kopitar passed to Chris Higgins in the dying seconds of regulation time but Rask blocked the effort with his right pad. Team captain Dustin Brown, who now has 22 points in 19 playoff games this year, barged in to slap the rebound into the net with 10 seconds on the clock, much to Paris’ fans horror.
In overtime, play was even and tense for nearly 18 minutes before Vasicek deflected a Ken Kuusk point shot past Halak to end it. Kopitar played his second strong game of the Finals and led everyone in points (3) and shots (9).
