Bridgeview, Ill. » The Real Salt Lake players lined up anxiously at midfield with their arms across each other's shoulders needing just one swift kick to lift them into the Major League Soccer championship game.

And Ned Grabavoy delivered it.

On the seventh attempt of a penalty-kick shootout that followed a marathon overtime game, the veteran midfielder -- inserted at the last minute for just an occasion -- fired the winning goal past diving keeper Jon Busch to give RSL an epic victory over the Chicago Fire in the MLS Eastern Conference final at sold-out Toyota Park on Saturday night.

The moment it happened, the thousands of roaring fans fell eerily silent, and Grabavoy's teammates rushed to mob him at midfield in celebration of the greatest victory in franchise history. The 5-4 win in the shootout broke the scoreless tie after 120 exhausting minutes of soccer in front of 21,723 fans, and put RSL into the MLS Cup title game against the Los Angeles Galaxy at Qwest Field in Seattle next Sunday.

"Truly a special night," coach Jason Kreis said, "and a special moment for this club and for everybody involved."

After the game, the coaches and players received their conference championship trophy on raised platform amid a hail of glittering confetti, then retreated into the locker room with their freshly minted championship T-shirts to dance and hug and spray champagne on one another.

"One more to go," forward Yura Movsisyan said.

The victory helped make up for the disappointment of losing the MLS Western Conference final at home last season, when RSL drilled shot after shot at the New York Red Bulls, only to be denied every time.

For a moment, it appeared the team might suffer an even crueler fate.

Tied after the first five penalty kicks, goalkeeper Nick Rimando dove low to his left to deny Chicago's Logan Pause and give RSL's Fabian Espindola a chance to win the game. But he lifted his shot high over the bar, while his teammates wilted a little at midfield.

Converting that "would have been a lot better for my heart," Kreis acknowledged.

But Rimando came up huge again, diving to his left once again to stop Chicago's Brandon Prideaux and allow Grabavoy to step up and knock home the biggest game-winner of his life, sending the Fire trudging deflated off the field.

"To get to this point and lose the way we did ..." coach Denis Hamlet said. "Sometimes, soccer is a cruel sport."

Not to RSL.

Not this time.

Even the coaches and players didn't expect to make the playoffs, and surely nobody seriously expected them to reach the MLS Cup.

The team was the last one to reach the postseason on a bizarre confluence of events on the final weekend of the regular-season, yet has put together a remarkable streak at just the right time. Its fourth straight victory marked a team record, and remarkably, it still has not lost a playoff game on the road.

"Everybody in the locker room always told ourselves that, hey, what we did last year wasn't going to be good enough," midfielder Clint Mathis said. "We had to do better, and so far, we have. We need to continue to push, and once you've gotten this far, why not just go and win it?"

Strangely, the Fire seemed content to play defensively for most of the game -- "they were scared of our speed," midfielder Will Johnson said -- while RSL came perilously close to once again regretting its missed chances despite dictating the action.

Busch made several terrific saves in regulation for Chicago, then watched RSL's Javier Morales launch the second penalty kick over the bar. That put the Fire in good position, but RSL's Robbie Findley, Kyle Beckerman and Johnson all converted before the dramatic final sequence.

"We never stopped believing, never stopped working," Kreis said. "And I'm just so pleased that occasionally, good things happen to good people."

mcl@sltrib.com