In the blink of an eye, everything can change.

The split-second it took for the puck to roll up along the boards, for Avs D Rob Blake to step up and Blues RW Pavol Demitra to stand down, meant the difference between a series knotted at two and a 3-1 lead for the Avalanche.

Blake saw he had the room to pinch and he took the opportunity. If Demitra had taken Blake's hit, he might have jarred the puck loose and caught Blake too far forward -- and one of the best goal-scorers in the league could have had a breakaway on Patrick Roy. Instead, Demitra backed off when he saw Blake's big body coming, allowing Blake a clear shot at goalie Roman Turek, or in this case, a clear shot at the perfectly positioned stick of Stephane Yelle.

The fact that Yelle was so perfectly positioned was impressive in itself. He had taken a beating from big Chris Pronger along the boards, got knocked down, got back up and got to the far post just in time to deflect Blake's shot past Turek. As the puck flicked off of his stick, Yelle got another smack from Pronger, but just a little too late.

For Yelle, it couldn't get any better than that. How often do you make the biggest mistake of your career on national television, and then get the opportunity to correct it 48 hours later in front of the same audience? He can forget about that wide-open net he missed in OT of Game 3. The demons were silenced when the red light went on at 4:23 of last night's first overtime.

But it was the split-second along the right boards that set up Yelle's game-winner, the split-second that Rob Blake won his own little battle with Pavol Demitra. Just like that, the Avs had the puck, and the puck found it's way into the St. Louis net.

Game over, goat to hero, all in the blink of an eye.

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