ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
If you know a hockey fan, especially one from Detroit or even more so from Pittsburgh, cut them a little slack today. Hockey fans put in a long night last night. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings played game five in the best-of-seven series for the Stanley Cup. Detroit was up three games to one, and leading by a goal with 34 seconds standing between them and the championship of professional hockey. Then the Penguins tied the score and went on to win the game deep into triple overtime. It was almost 1 o'clock in the morning when the game ended.
(SOUNDBITE OF HOCKEY GAME)
U: (Unintelligible) he scores! Sykora said he would get the winner, and he did. It's going back to Pittsburgh.
SIEGEL: Penguins fans today are both elated and exhausted. Fans like Jim Webber, who is a professor of business of Duquesne University. That was quite a game last night.
P: It was quite a game.
SIEGEL: How big for Penguins fans was it?
P: Oh, it's huge. The team has played well. They've had a good run in the series, and no one really wants it to end. So it was exciting. And they needed to win one game. They won one game, and now they have to win another one tomorrow night.
SIEGEL: I imagine that you live in a city where a tremendous number of people were up to 1 o'clock in the morning last night.
P: I would assume so. It's interesting. I came in a little late this morning, and some of the people I was meeting with also came in later than normal. So I think it was an exciting time, and the fans were quite happy.
SIEGEL: Tell us a little bit about this game and the roller-coaster ride of following the Penguins as they attempted to stay alive.
P: Sure. Once they got started in game three and they came home, so the team rallied around the support of the fans here and unfortunately lost a close game in game four. But there was confidence that we could win in Detroit. So we were excited, and each of the last three games have been very close, and it's a matter of putting in the best performance and hoping for breaks, and we got those both at the end of the regulation time and then in the third overtime.
SIEGEL: Hockey is a game where home ice, in theory, is a pretty big advantage. I mean, a room full of your fans means something to a hockey team, I should think.
P: In most arenas, I think so, certainly in (unintelligible). I actually taped one of the games I was attending just because I wanted to hear how loud the crowd was in terms of the broadcast, and it's pretty deafening both in the arena and in the broadcasting booth. Now some arenas, I think, aren't as quite as full, and the fans aren't as excited, but certainly in Pittsburgh, they've embraced this team and have been very supportive of it.
SIEGEL: It's loud enough so that it's hard to make out what the play-by-play announcers are saying throughout the call of the game, actually.
P: That's our goal. Yes.
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P: We want to be heard. And, you know, we pay good money for our seats. We want to be heard. So it's been a lot of fun.
SIEGEL: This, though, could come close to being, literally, a Pyrrhic victory - that is, the number of Penguins players who were bleeding or in pain by the end of this game is extraordinary.
P: Yes. And it, again, shows the character of the team that, you know, Ryan Malone - after being hit in the face by a shot puck - came back bloody, and we're not sure if it counts that he broke his nose because it was already broken from before. And then...
SIEGEL: Is that a point of scoring in hockey is - whether it's an officially broken nose or not?
P: Yes. We have to get a ruling from Toronto on that, I think. And, but - and then Sergei Gonchar goes into the boards and hurts himself and comes out just for the third overtime period in case he's needed for as power play, which he was. So it shows that these guys keep playing hard. And I think we'll find out when the series is over how many of these players really are hurt, because I think they're all playing hurt, you know, with various bumps and bruises, but they know it's on the line to win the Stanley Cup, and it's a dream come true for many of these players, so they're going to be out there giving the best they can.
SIEGEL: Well, thanks for talking with us about it, and good luck to all Penguins fans.
P: Thank you. My pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's Jim Webber, who teaches business at Duquesne University and, as you may have gathered, is a big-time fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
