1991 Stanley Cup Final, Game 6
Gameday...
For
the first time in their history, the Penguins would be playing a game with the
Stanley Cup in the building, ready for them to win. But first
they’d have to take another game in the resilient North Stars’ raucous home rink.
The
mood amongst the players was a good, positive one, recalled Troy Loney. While
driving to the rink with Joe Mullen that morning for a team skate, he asked his
teammate, Can you feel
this? “Joey said, ‘Yeah. We don’t usually get really nervous, but we’re pretty
nervous here.’ And then we both said, ‘Yeah but it’s a good nervous.’ We were
just on fire at that point, and we knew there was no way we could lose that
game.”
According to assistant coach Rick Kehoe, Mario Lemieux
was feeling just as confident in the dressing room before the game. “(Defenseman)
Grant Jennings was kind of
injured and he was on the edge of going or not going that night,” recalled
Kehoe. “He said, ‘Well, I should be good for the seventh game.’ And Mario just
looked at him and said, ‘Nope. There’s not going to be a seventh game.’”
No
one, however, was getting ahead of themselves. They knew how big the task was
that lay before them. “Every guy’s got to have the game of his life,” said Phil
Bourque. “If everybody does that, it’s going to be worth it."
Excerpted from The Pittsburgh Penguins: The First 25 Years by Greg Enright, available at amzn.to/3cna4N4 or bit.ly/2OGZeYO.
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