Kessel, Penguins one win away from Stanley Cup There was a moment, a fleeting sequence, when it looked like the Sharks might finally earn their first lead of the Stanley Cup final. And then Phil Kessel happened and as Frank Seravalli writes, the Penguins are a win away from being champions.

Frank Seravalli TSN Senior Hockey Reporter Follow|Archive

SAN JOSE, Calif. — There was a moment, a fleeting sequence, when it looked like the Sharks might finally earn their first lead of the Stanley Cup final.

The Shark Tank was spilling over emotion. Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns were buzzing around the net.

Barely five minutes had elapsed off the clock, but the start of Game 4 just felt … different.

And then Phil Kessel happened.

Kessel raced across San Jose’s blue line. The Sharks were changing. He took Brenden Dillon wide and snapped off a wrist shot from 32-feet that boomeranged directly to the stick of Ian Cole.

“It ended up right on my tape,” Cole said. “When you see the yawning cage, you want to try to get it there as quick as you can.”

A one-on-four rush turned into a back-breaking goal, a sequence Kessel created from nothing. The Penguins took San Jose’s first punch and laughed.

“That should never happen,” Logan Couture said.

In the grand scheme of a 104-game season, one or two nights are nothing more than a random cross-section of time, a sample size not nearly big enough to draw a conclusion.

Hockey is a fickle game. A frozen six-ounce disc of vulcanized rubber bounces funny, particularly on Californian ice in 40-degree weather. It does not always produce a consistent result. The best team doesn’t always win.

That’s why the Stanley Cup playoffs are four rounds of four wins. Names aren’t chiseled into the 124-year-old chalice by fluke.

These Pittsburgh Penguins are no random happenstance. The sample size since Mike Sullivan took charge in mid-December is too large now, their playoff run too long.

What ultimately played out in Pittsburgh’s 3-1 win in Game 4 at SAP Center was more of the same of what we witnessed in the first three games; a reality the San Jose Sharks maybe refused to accept until Monday night: the Penguins are the better team.

On Thursday night, the Penguins will have a chance to prove that for eternity.

The Stanley Cup will be buffed and polished inside Consol Energy Center during Game 5, as the 2016 Penguins will attempt to become the first Pittsburgh major-league team to win a championship on home soil since Bill Mazeroski’s home run eliminated the Yankees in 1960.

“You work hard to have this opportunity,” Sidney Crosby said. “You’ve just got to understand that it’s going to take our best and we’re going to see their absolute best. In saying that, you can’t get caught looking ahead of things. We’ve had a great approach all playoff long — all season long — in making sure we’re staying in the moment here. That will be important here, now more than ever.”

Amazingly, after a Quixotic 15-14-3 start to this season, the Holy Grail is within Pittsburgh’s grasp once again. Only three straight Sharks wins can pry it loose. San Jose is facing elimination for the third time in three rounds, but they won their two Game 7s.

This is a much more daunting mountain to climb. There is little confidence pushing them upward. Of the 32 teams trailing 3-1 in best-of-seven Stanley Cup final history, only the 1942 Maple Leafs have come back to hoist the prize.

Now, with Crosby hosting a score of family and friends from Cole Harbour and beyond for Game 5, it is hard to imagine the Penguins letting this slip away.

“You’ve just got to go and believe we can win a game,” Couture said. “We’ve been good on the road all year. Just win three periods and move on. We’re going to battle to the end.”

Pittsburgh’s suffocating speed and rambunctious forecheck are why this Stanley Cup final should no longer be about what the Sharks and their stars haven’t done, but more about how much the Penguins have smothered them.

This series has been tightly contested at times, but the Sharks have held a lead for exactly zero seconds in four games and two overtimes.

In fact, the Penguins have not played from behind in 435 minutes and 46 seconds, dating back to Game 5 against Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference final. They nearly set an expansion-era Stanley Cup playoff record by outshooting their opponent for 13 consecutive playoff games.

That mark fell short during the Sharks’ valiant push to tie in the third period. But even that did not inspire much confidence in San Jose’s dressing room.

“I think it had something to do with them sitting back a little bit,” Couture said. “We got our speed game going through the neutral zone. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t score.

“It’s a loss. It’s just like the other two losses. It sucks.”

What was billed as a brilliant Stanley Cup final has turned into a lopsided mismatch.

It might be unbelievable, but that is no coincidence. The Penguins are so close they can almost taste it.

“I think we'll talk a lot about it,” Matt Cullen said. “We have a team that has a lot of guys that have been to the top of the mountain. We have a lot of guys that can share that experience and understand that experience … Ultimately it just falls on all of us to come out with our best game. We know it's a huge opportunity.”

Contact Frank Seravalli on Twitter: @frank_seravalli