All the wrenching and wrangling that have preceded what comes next was just so much stuttering foreplay. One game for all the ice. What it means is one team is going to dance with hockey's blessed urn, Lord Stanley's jug, in the arena awaiting the Devils, now repacked for a trip to Denver. One team will share the satisfaction of achievement, reassure itself that the pain and the general indifference of the larger world has been worth it, while the other gets to put out the lawn furniture. One piece of indistinct geography, northern New Jersey or greater Colorado, will be able to get on with the rest of its life, and the other will get to suffer the sweet agony of accomplishment.
Losers become a local story.
The stakes for the Devils are, oddly, not as great as for the Avs. The Devils have the Cup and to give it back would be no more than relinquishing custody of a temporary prize, while for the Avs this is a mission that has defined every moment of their season. Without the Cup at the end, all before has been pride and propaganda. They have earned one final chance to do this. This means the pressure is greater on the Avs, and the Avs have at times shown the capacity to handle pressure like egg yolk on a tongue depressor.