Colorado center Stephane Yelle was probably up all night, envisioning the wide-open net he just couldn't hit. At 4:40 of the first overtime in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, Yelle's shot tipped off of the stick of a sprawling Roman Turek, hit the post, and trickled away from the open goal mouth. "I just couldn't lift the puck quite high enough," said Yelle.

The Avs missed their opportunity to go up 3-0 in the series and gave Turek the confidence to overcome his shaky start (2 goals on 3 shots) and upstage Patrick Roy's 56-save performance. "It can really come back and haunt you when you miss an opportunity like that," said Blues head coach Joel Quenneville. "Roman got his stick over and that was his last hope. Luckly, it turned out to be the great hope."

Had Yelle scored, the Avs would have taken a game that they didn't deserve to win. St. Louis had something to prove after dropping the first two games to a Forsberg-free Colordao club, and only two NHL teams have ever come back from a 3-0 defecit. "This is the biggest game of our lives," said Blues RW Dallas Drake pregame. And they played like it. The Blues out-muscled, out-hit and out-maneuvered the Avs all night. In 90 minutes and 27 seconds, they peppered Roy with 60 shots. But Turek turned aside 16 OT shots, including Yelle's, and those were the saves that mattered.

Lindsay Berra is covering the NHL playoffs for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail lindsay.berra@espnmag.com.