Bring your earplugs to Chicago

United Center famous for its wall of sound

Jin Chicago ust before 7:20 local time on Monday night, tenor Jim Cornelison will take his customary place on a red carpet on the United Center ice and begin singing The Star Spangled Banner.

Before he gets through the opening line, the place will explode. It’s one of the more compelling rituals in sports: the Chicago arena throbbing and shaking as Cornelison sings the national anthem, a sombre occasion in most stadiums but, for reasons perhaps owing to the Edmonton Oilers dynasty of the 1980s, one that became a moment for raucous patriotism at the Madhouse on Madison, and its successor across the street.

And it’s likely to be all the more bananas on Monday because, for all this loaded Blackhawks team has accomplished under coach Joel Quenneville, they have never clinched a Stanley Cup on home ice. After a wild 2-1 victory on the road in Tampa on Saturday in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final, Chicago has a chance to end the series in Game 6, which would test whether the United Center could get even louder than it does during the anthem. Bring your earplugs.

Patrick Sharp, who scored Chicago’s opening goal on Saturday after Lightning goalie Ben Bishop collided with teammate Victor Hedman in a play that was deserving of a circus tent, wouldn’t be sucked into a discussion of how cool it would be to finish the job in front of a home crowd.

“We’ll talk about that if it happens on Monday night,” said the Chicago forward, thought to be nearing the end of his days with the Blackhawks for salary-cap reasons. “But I can tell you that our fans back in Chicago are extremely passionate. You guys have been in the city throughout the series. You see the red jerseys. You see the support we have behind us.”

“Can’t wait to get back there, use that energy,” Sharp said. “I know it filters down through the team.”

“Obviously, there’s a lot of buzz, a lot of excitement, a lot of things going on around the entire event,” captain Jonathan Toews said Sunday afternoon in Chicago. “I think we’re just going to do our best as individuals to focus on our

The tradition may

go back to the 1985 final against Gretzky’s Oilers

job as players and focus on the game and nothing more.”

Their teammates all echoed that talk: Don’t think about clinching at home, just worry about the game. Trust the process … and other insights.

Not noticing the crowd, though, will take some doing. During the Blackhawks’ last run to the Cup final, in 2013, The New York Times tried to determine the roots of the full-throated anthem cheers. Wayne Messmer, who regularly performed the anthem at the old Chicago Stadium, traced it to the 1985 Cup final against the Gretzky-led Oilers. Edmonton had pummelled Chicago in the opening two games, and there were complaints that Oilers fans had been cheering during the U.S. anthem. The Chicago fans, perhaps trying to spark an overmatched team, maybe just trying to claim noise during the anthem as their own thing, were particularly fired up. As the Times wrote: “From his perch in the organ loft high above the ice, Messmer sang the opening words of the anthem, and then was shocked. A wall of sound was coming at him. ‘I was like, what the heck?,’ he said.”

The wall of sound will come again Monday, but as the Blackhawks keep noting, it will not be enough. Tampa won Game 3 in Chicago, and took the United Center crazies out of Game 4 with a smothering first-period performance in which they allowed only two shots on goal, before ultimately losing 2-1.

And although the Blackhawks wrested control of the series on Saturday night, it was hardly the stuff of dominance. Through five games, the title round couldn’t be any closer. Each game has finished with a one-goal margin, the first time that has happened since 1951 and only the second time ever. At no point in 300 minutes of play has either team held a two-goal lead, which has never happened before. Eight goals have been scored with one team holding a one-goal lead, and the trailing team scored the goal each time. And in all five games, the winning goal has come in the third period.

So, yes, it’s tight. Saturday was no different. Sharp’s goal off the Bishop clunker and an early injury to Nikita Kucherov appeared to have the Lightning in a desperate spot, but they tied the game on a Valtteri Filppula goal in the second period and had several chances to take the lead before Antoine Vermette scored the winner for Chicago early in the third. There was a rush, and collisions in front of the net, and Vermette got his stuck on a bouncing puck. Not pretty, but effective.

Kris Versteeg, the veteran who has been in and out of the lineup but who set up the Vermette goal on Saturday, said this is how they believed the final would play out.

“You know, every game we expected to be close,” he said Sunday. “We expected it to be a grind. We don’t expect any less going into Game 6.”

Just don’t expect it to be quiet.