Stanley rules

 I don't know what you were doing Saturday night, but here's what I was doing: Examining another piece of evidence pointing to an irrefutable fact. 

That fact being, the Stanley Cup playoffs are the best playoffs. And Stanley Cup Game 7s are the best Game 7s.

And Game 7 sudden-death overtimes?

Shoo. It's like watching a bunch of teenagers in a horror flick approaching That Door That Should Not Be Opened. Except the tension s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s out like bleeping Gumby for minutes at a time.

And then, in a flash, the door is flung open. And it's all over.

Saturday night that happened in Boston, and, damn, it was glorious. The Bruins once again were trying to eliminate the Toronto Maple Leafs -- they seem to take a perverse glee in doing that, like Sid torturing his army men in "Toy Story" -- and, sure enough, they did it again. And after cruelly giving the Leafs a brief glimmer of hope, to boot.

Game 7, see, was dominated by the Leafs early, but they couldn't get the biscuit past Jeremy Swayman in goal. Down at the other end, meanwhile, Ilya Samsonov was a wall in the Leafs net. So it was 0-0 after one and 0-0 after two, and then, midway through the third period, the Leafs went up 1-0 on a William Nylander goal.

And for just over a minute, they could see daylight. For just over a minute, they weren't the same old Leafs anymore, capable of breaking the hearts of their believers in any circumstance.

But then -- just over a minute later -- Hampus Lindholm tied it for the Bruins, and on it went. And then, a tick fewer than two minutes into overtime, Lindholm fired the puck into the zone as David Pastrnak streaked down the wing after it, and you know what happened next: The puck took a crazy bounce off the corner boards, Pastrnak played carom perfectly, and just like that, it was over.

Bruins 2, Leafs 1.

On a goal that looked like an ordinary dump-and-chase until -- wait, what?

You won't see a purer example of the suddenness of sudden death than that. Nor a better example of why Stanley's Game 7s are the best -- unless it was Game 7 last night between the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights, when Radek Faksa scored the go-ahead goal for the Stars 44 seconds into the third period and the Stars put the clamps on Vegas thereafter to eliminate the defending Stanley Cup champs 2-1.

Stanley rules. Rules, I tell you.