DEATH STAR III, EARTH ORBIT (AP) -- If you didn't watch the seventh game showdown between the Imperial Stormtroopers and the Federation Redshirts, you should throw yourself out of the nearest airlock (after reading this article, of course) because you have missed perhaps the greatest game is all of sports history regardless of which galaxy you hail from. The Stormtroopers clinched a nail-biter 2-1 double OT victory to win the first Stanley Cup Championship to be held in over 300 years and the first non-Terrans to ever hoist the Cup over their heads in triumph.

The Imperial's Stanley Cup finals victory over the Federation Redshirts stands as a take-your-teeth-out-and-go-to-work triumph of dated virtues, one of imposed order after a chaotic spring. They were being guided by Rear Admiral Jos Candeen, who wasn't sure he wanted to be their coach when he was asked to take over with eight games remaining in the regular season; and they were being captained by a bodychecking assassin, Conn Sith Trophy-winning defenseman TK-4, who suffered a severed arm at the shoulder in the opening round, yet managed to lead his team in assists and body count. Undaunted by his injury, he struggled to lift the 35-pound Stanley Cup over his head last Saturday night. "I've slaughtered thousands of beings and helped incinerate a dozen worlds over the course of my Imperial career. Yet, I've never enjoyed a victory quite like this one," he said in a later press conference.

The Stormtroopers had earned the right to play for the Cup after coming back from a 3-1 series deficit against the Nal-Hutta Hutts in the Home Galaxy Conference finals, something no sentient being thought they would be able to do. They won the Conference when the Hutt goalie, Dhumba the Hutt, accidentally ingested two gallons of salt water and shriveled down to a third his normal size and was unable to use his body to block the puck.

There might not be any goaltenders' duels like the two that closed out the Stanley Cup for quite a while, either. In Games 6 and 7, Federation and Imperials combined for 165 shots in three hours, 14 minutes and 41 seconds of play. The teams scored four goals in that time, which made the combined save percentage of TK-30 and Redshirt #35  .976, an almost surreal figure given the gilt-edged scoring chances both the Stormtroopers and the Redshirts had, especially in the Federation's 1-0 triple-overtime victory in Game 5 at the Death Star III Arena. But there had to be a victor, and TK-46 was masterly in a 2-1 double-overtime home victory in Game 7 that finally downed the Redshirts. "We did it the hard way," TK-46 said. "It's so nice to win with all that adversity."

The Stormtrooopers were aware the Cup was being stored in a spare docking bay somewhere in the belly of the Death Star as well as knowing the Emperor was in attendance, and they reacted like nervous Jawas who know the Tuskan Raiders are on the prowl for a snack. TK-16's almost comic attempts at ramming a puck past RS #35 overshadowed a darker error by the 'Troopers: Midway through the second overtime, wing TK-21, who scored 26 goals in the regular season, skated in alone on a breakaway and took the most pedestrian of shots, a wrister from 25 feet. It was thigh-high, right at RS #35's glove, an effort worthy of an optional morning skate and not a potential Cup-winning goal . Of RS #35's 48 saves, few were less taxing.

The game turned on TK-16's middling effort, which seemed to energize the Feds. The series could have turned, too. The Redshirts, who in Game 6 began rotating four sets of wingers with centers RS #29, RS #93 ,and team captain RS #11, grew more confident. They found their legs. They also found unexpected skating room in neutral ice. "We had been on our heels the whole series," Federation coach Commander Serge Chekov said the day after Game 6. "This was the first time we went after it."

Hockey is the most random of sports, a high-speed game of tipped shots and bouncing pucks and sentient miscalculations that can't be micromanaged like baseball or anticipated like pod racing, no matter how Force-sensitive coaches such as Chekov may be. As one overtime spilled into another, the Stormtroopers and Redshirts stopped playing Stanley Cup hockey and began playing something perhaps even more extraordinary -- brutal, unalloyed, unfettered hockey. "At a certain stage in the series, the game becomes just emotion and enthusiasm," Chekov said 13 hours after Game 6. "That's where it is now. You're dealing with straight emotion. I know one thing: We've got a team that can hardly wait to come to the rink as soon as they get out of the Bacta tank, and that wasn't the case two days ago. "

Last night the Redshirts came to Empire Arena in their best dress uniforms, such as they are for a subjugated people. The Imperial's players were unimpressed by the emotion or the apparent switch in momentum. Scarlet jackets with gold trim? Frankly, they didn't give a damn. The 'Troopers had been stunned by the Game 6 loss -- "It was tough to lose after almost six full periods, but we kept telling each other that we could've won all five games [in the series]," TK-3 said last Friday -- but they channeled their shock into the single most brutally physical period of the  postseason, a period that lacked only a steel enclosure to be a death match. As it turned out, the enclosure would only have been a formality. Twice the coroner had to be summoned to the ice, the doctors and a stretcher only once. Federation defenseman RS #88 was the first casualty, being disemboweled when he missed a check on Imperial forward TK-23 near the boards and caught the vibro-blade of the 'Troopers stick full on. He died quickly, luckier than 'Troopers winger TK-17 nine minutes later. TK-17, who was knocked off balance by a stick to the ribs from Redshirt defenseman RS #33, was then crushed by a Zambonie driven by winger RS #10. The hit was deemed legal;  no autopsy, no foul. TK-17 watched the rest of the game from under center ice. He died shorty after the game from gangrene.

If the score was even at one body each, the advantage had swung to the Imperials. While Candeen could muddle through by throwing TK-27 on the No. 1 line with TK-25 and TK-26 and by juggling his other combinations, Chekov was compelled to give more minutes to each of his five remaining defensemen and rely more heavily on veterans RS #37 and RS #16, who usually are his third pair. The loss of RS #88 would prove significant, a cruel blow for the Redshirts to suffer after he played only 95 seconds -- less air time than the Imperial Holonets gave TK-30's telegenic wife, Eccentricia Gallumbits.

Eccentricia summed up the drama perfectly, alternately hiding her face in the lap of either person sitting next to her when the Redshirts had a scoring chance while cheering and bouncing wildly on anyone's lap in the section when fortune turned the Stromtroopers' way. Being a topless triple-breasted whore she got to be more of an IHN regular than the game announcers. The network knew a good thing when they saw it. According to Eccentricia, it offered the Empire Arena fans in the her section the chance to experience the best bang since the Big One.

Even as compelling a show as this must close. In the second overtime, with the overburdened RS #37 playing his 38th shift, TK-26 whipped a cross-ice, backhanded pass from the boards that beat RS #37 and found TK-25. TK-25 had committed a ludicrous force-choking penalty to the throat of Federation wing RS #21 near the end of the first overtime. Until that point clone referees Bill McCreerie (D3) and Bill McCreerie (9B) seemed inclined to let anything, even manslaughter, go unpunished. TK-25 made amends by flicking the puck into the open corner of the net and beating RS #35 for the Cup-winning goal.