My most memorable game: Rick Tocchet

Installment No. 3 in an occasional series highlighting the most memorable game in which players participated as a member of the Penguins.

Player: Rick Tocchet
Date: May 1, 1992
Game: Game 7, Round 1, playoffs
Site: Capital Centre, Landover, Md.
Result: Penguins, 3-1

It was the kind of game in which Tocchet, one of the most ferocious competitors in NHL history, would revel.

And thrive.

High intensity, higher stakes.

Two teams fighting desperately to extend their season, all too aware that one was just 60 minutes of hockey away from the start of its summer.

But Tocchet would not be part of this game. Not on the ice, anyway.

His shoulder had been separated by a hit from Capitals forward Kelly Miller earlier in the series, so he staked out a spot in the press box in one end zone at the Capital Centre and focused on what was playing out before him.

Which, predictably in his case, meant ignoring everything else that was going on around him.

Tocchet had decided to spend the game there for a reason -- "I wanted to feel the fans, the game, so I went to the press box" -- but interacting with the people around him never made it onto his to-do list that evening.

"Usually as a player, you watch the game, but you get up and you do whatever (during breaks in play)," he said. "I don't think I left my seat, even during the intermissions. I wasn't really talkative. I sat with a couple of players (the Penguins' other scratches were Kjell Samuelsson, Jock Callander, Mike Needham, Wendell Young and Dave Michayluk), but it wasn't like we were talking too much. You're just in your own little zone as a player, because there was a lot at stake for the team, obviously, but for me personally, too."

That's because Tocchet, who had been acquired from Philadelphia in a three-team mega-deal a few months earlier, recognized that the Penguins were fully capable of defending the championship they had won the previous spring.

Doing that had seemed unlikely just six days earlier, when Washington grabbed a 3-1 advantage in the series, in large part because of its skilled and mobile defense corps. But after the Capitals' 7-2 victory in Game 4 at the Civic Arena, Mario Lemieux proposed a tactical adjustment that had the Penguins adopt a more passive style -- and altered the course of the series.

Tocchet recalls that message being reinforced repeatedly, by both his teammates and coach Scotty Bowman, in the locker room as game time approached.

"I was down there and listening to Mario and Kevin (Stevens) and Ronnie (Francis), and talking to Scotty about letting their (defensemen) carry the puck up so they couldn't beat us," he said. "That was brilliant strategy. We made Washington dump the puck. Before that, their (defensemen) would give it to the forwards and they would jump by us. There was a lot of talk to make sure when (Kevin) Hatcher and (Al) Iafrate and all those guys jump up on the play, that we're in these (specific) positions. There was a lot of coaching from a lot of players, as much as there was from Scotty. There was a lot of dialogue."

More important, there was team-wide buy-in. Again.

The Penguins limited Washington to 19 shots, and Tom Barrasso stopped 18 of them.

Lemieux gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead with a shorthanded goal at 14:01 of the opening period and, after Iafrate pulled the Capitals even 24 seconds into the second, Jaromir Jagr got the series-winner during a power play a little more than nine minutes later.

And when Joe Mullen hit an empty net at 19:27 of the third, the comeback in the series was complete and the Penguins' spot opposite the Rangers in Round 2 was secure.

"It was a real team effort," Tocchet said. "I really saw the team come together."

The Penguins would drop two of the first three games in the Rangers series before reeling off 11 consecutive victories to lock up the franchise's second Cup.

Which is pretty much what one of Tocchet's teammates all but predicted in the heady moments after that Game 7 victory in Landover.

"When we beat Washington," Tocchet said, "I remember in the dressing room, (Stevens) looked at me and said, 'Get ready. We're making the run now.' "