Red Wings' Finals Loss Explainable, After All

OK, so what went wrong?

Why couldn't the Detroit Red Wings seal the deal? How did this team, so used to applying the choke hold, so adept at squeezing the playoff life out of you--let the Stanley Cup itself slip through their gloves?

It's easy to sound like you're excuse-making when you analyze reasons why a team lost a playoff series.

But there needs to be closure, and to get that, there needs to be answers to those one-word questions.

Why? How?


The Schedule

NBC won't ever admit it, but here's an educated theory as to why the Finals began so soon after the Red Wings dispatched the Chicago Blackhawks in the conference final.

In a case of bad timing, the new, Conan O'Brien-hosted "Tonight" show was set to debut the same week that the Cup Finals would be going on.

The Red Wings finished off the 'Hawks on Wednesday, May 27. NBC, which had the rights to Games One and Two (Versus had Three and Four), had themselves a quandary.

Knowing all too well how playoff hockey games can lapse into seemingly endless overtime (read: Game Five of last year's Finals, which went into triple OT), the network no doubt got nauseous at the thought of the little NHL bleeding into Conan's time slot during his opening week.

So what to do?

Under normal conditions, NBC probably would have allowed the NHL to set Game One for Monday or Tuesday night. As Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said on Media Day (the day before Game One), the Finals matchup was a compelling one; it could have used a few days of hype.

And, as Babcock noted, when you win a series in five games (as Detroit did over Chicago), you normally get a few days off before you have to prepare for the next round.

But with the Conan thing looming, the league had a proposal for NBC: how about if we get Games One and Two out of the way, over the weekend?

Since Versus was slated to carry Games Three and Four, there would be no Conan conflict, so those could happen during the week.

Game Five, carried by NBC, was on Saturday, June 6. Again, no conflict. The network successfully navigated through Conan's opening week without any possibility of being screwed by the NHL.

The schedule called for three games in the first four days, and five in the first eight.

Bottom line: as the series wore on, the cumulative effects of the Anaheim seven-game series, starting the Finals so soon after Chicago, and the Finals schedule itself, wore the injury-torn Red Wings down.


The "big boys"

Tigers manager Jim Leyland recently expressed concern about his team's struggling offense. He called out who he referred to as the "big boys" -- guys like Magglio Ordonez, Placido Polanco, and Curtis Granderson. Maybe even Miguel Cabrera, to an extent.

The message? Unless they really get it going, then the Tigers will continue to struggle to maintain their fragile lead in the division, if they maintain it at all.

Here's what happened as the Finals unfolded.

After the first two games in Detroit, both Red Wings victories, the analysis was, "The Red Wings haven't even played their best yet. The big guns haven't shown up yet. Just wait till they do!"

The Red Wings lost Game Three in Pittsburgh, on a third period power play goal by Sergei Gonchar.

Everyone said, "The Red Wings haven't even played their best yet. The big guns haven't shown up yet. Just wait till they do!"

Game Four turned around in the second period, the Red Wings leading, 2-1. After a 5:37 flurry, the Penguins led, 4-2. They ended up winning by that score. The series was tied, 2-2.

Everyone said, "The Red Wings haven't even played their best yet. The big guns haven't shown up yet. Just wait till they do!"

The Red Wings were getting goals from guys like Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm, Brad Stuart, and Kris Draper. Which was fine, except that the front-line players weren't contributing.

The Red Wings exploded in Game Five, but it was mainly their defensemen who scored.

"The Red Wings haven't even played their best yet. The big guns haven't shown up yet. Just wait till they do!"

Game Six would be with two days of rest after Game Five, which was supposed to help the battered, tired Red Wings.

But they came out flat as a pancake, fell behind 2-0, and lost 2-1.

"The Red Wings haven't even played their best yet. The big guns haven't shown up yet. Just wait till they do!"

Game Seven would provide that final vindication; one last chance for the Hossas and Samuelssons and Franzens and Holmstroms and Hudlers to show up. One last chance to wash away, for good, the stench of the first six games of non-productivity from the "big boys."

You know the rest.

Bottom line: The Red Wings never did "play their best." The big guns never did show up. Their only goal in Game Seven came from another defenseman -- Jonathan Ericsson.


Jordan Staal's shorthanded goal

You want a turning point? I've got one that beats all: the shorthanded goal by Jordan Staal in the second period of Game Four.

The situation: Red Wings leading, 2-1, on a fluky point shot from Stuart early in the period. Red Wings on a power play. The Mellon Arena crowd uneasy. A chance for Detroit to seize a very valuable two-goal lead, which they could very well have turned into a 3-1 series lead.

But Staal changed all that.

He poked the puck away from Nick Lidstrom at the Pittsburgh blue line, outraced Brian Rafalski, and deftly slipped the puck past Chris Osgood, who was awfully deep in his crease.

THAT'S your turning point.

Bottom line: I'm telling you, the series could very well have turned out differently -- could have ended a week ago Saturday in Detroit -- if Staal doesn't make that play.


Puck not possessed

As the series wore on, the Red Wings' famous, vaunted puck possession game deteriorated.

By the end, in fact, it just about had vanished.

Whether due to the Penguins' adjusting during the series, or the Red Wings fatiguing, the result was that Detroit's attack turned into shot after shot from the point -- very little danger emerged from near Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

Gone was the tic-tac-toe passing, the rink-wide stuff, the cycling deep in the Pittsburgh zone.

The power play, even, was dimly lit by the end.

Babcock admitted, in the series' aftermath, that his team was "gassed" and "running on fumes" in Game Seven.

He also acknowledged that his team never really got going and that caught up to them.

Bottom line: The Red Wings simply were not the same team that dispatched Columbus, Anaheim, and Chicago.

All that, and the Red Wings still came within inches (a Niklas Kronwall crossbar late in Game Seven) of tying the final game and sending it into overtime.

Anytime you lose by one goal in Game Seven of the Finals, you've had a pretty good season.

Not that it won't hurt this summer, because it will.

After the game, before I headed for the ice to interview happy Penguins, I passed the Red Wings' coaches room.

Inside, Babcock and his staff and GM Ken Holland, and assistant GM Jim Nill, plus other members of the team's brass, stood quietly, talking softly. Their faces were drawn. It appeared to me that they looked stunned.

Outside the room, chief pro scout Mark Howe spoke quietly with another front office type. Howe looked numb.

No more game plans to formulate. No more practice. No more videotape to hash over.

No more hockey.

Which would be all fine and dandy, if the Stanley Cup was sitting in that dressing room.

Instead, the Penguins frolicked with it on the Joe Louis Arena ice surface.

But the better team won. Let's not forget that.

Super Mario Rewarded For Difficult Mid-Season Decision

Back in February, the Pittsburgh Penguins were just trying to salvage their season. As 2008 turned into 2009, the team that only the previous spring had vied for the Stanley Cup was in trouble. Facing adversity.

The words are Mario Lemieux’s.

The Penguins owner was on the Joe Louis Arena ice Friday night, taking in all the Stanley Cup-winning revelry surrounding him, when I sidled up.

I wondered how difficult it was for Lemieux to render the ziggy to coach Michel Therien, who was presiding over mediocrity when summoned to his boss’ office.

“Whenever the team is struggling, changes have to be made and it’s easier to change the coach than all the players,” Lemieux said, grinning a little sheepishly—as if he had stumbled onto a winning formula, which he had.

It wasn’t a grinning situation when the Pens were still struggling to keep ahead of the traditional mediocrity standard of .500, even after over 50 games had been played.

“I think Michel is a very good coach,” Lemieux said. “But when you’re struggling, changes have to be made.”

So Mario made one—a big one.

Enter Dan Bylsma.

Therien was cashiered in mid-February, the trade deadline approaching and the final turn of the season looming ahead.

If Lemieux was going to pull the trigger, it was then.

“I think it was a turning point,” acknowledged Super Mario of his swapping Therien for Bylsma as Pens’ head coach.

Lemieux didn't actually fire Therien--GM Ray Shero did--but he was very influential in the decision

Lemieux used the word “adversity” when discussing his team’s rocky season, and few know its meaning better than he—what with his battle with Hodgkin’s Disease and the Penguins franchise being threatened to be moved out of Pittsburgh—only a few years ago.

But then Bylsma was promoted from the minor leagues and things changed.

“We got more aggressive,” Lemieux told me. “We changed up the power play...the penalty kill. Dan’s very positive. He’s been great for the guys on the ice and off the ice. Then the players started buying in.”

That’s an understatement—maybe of the year.

Soon after Bylsma took over, the Penguins ripped off a 16-game streak in which they won 13 times and lost only thrice—twice in shootouts.

They were the hottest team in the league heading into the playoffs.

Lemieux, as a player, is part of one of only two teams to win back-to-back Stanley Cups since 1988—the 1991-92 Penguins. So when he says he felt good about the team’s chances as the post-season dawned, he’s not some guy off the street.

“I think the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy in sports to win,” he said with unabashed bias. “And to come in here (in Detroit), win a Game Seven, after all the adversity...it’s very gratifying,” he added.

But what’s it like as an owner?

I put it to him.

“Well, it’s great,” he said as he surveyed the scene from our location on the ice near the benches: champagne being shot from bottles into the air, players still skating the Cup around, their families very much a part of the whole thing—wives and girlfriends, and children with miniature versions of their father’s jerseys on their small torsos.

“It was a great feeling as a player, and to watch these guys, the way they hung in there....I’m very proud of them. It’s an incredible feeling.”

The coaching change in mid-season isn’t usually something that has a happy ending. The NHL was a treasure trove of fired coaches this season, but nowhere did things end up working out like they did in Pittsburgh.

Not very far from where Lemieux held court, I found Bylsma—just before he headed into the dressing room to enjoy the Cup with his players.

Was this moment ever, I asked, on his radar when he took over from Therien in February?

To my surprise, it kinda was.

“Actually,” Bylsma said, giving it some thought. “You know, there was a moment where I thought that this team could have a mural on Mellon Arena—a picture with them raising the Cup. But that was fleeting. We were more worried about just getting some wins.”

The coach agreed with the owner: the players “bought in” to the new system, the new way of doing things.

“This isn’t my victory,” Bylsma said. “It’s theirs,” he added, nodding toward the few players still on the ice.

The Penguins’ captain, Sidney Crosby, skated off in terrible pain after a hit early in the second period. It looked to be a knee injury—or something to do with the leg.

The score was 1-0, Pittsburgh. And there went arguably the team’s best overall player, doubled over in pain.

What was going through the coach’s mind at that point?

The deliciousness of the moment wasn’t lost on Bylsma.

“I just thought,” he said, truly giving his answer some time to formulate, “that it just made for a better story. That we didn’t have to rely on just one or two guys to win it.”

Bylsma adjusted his new Stanley Cup Champs hat.

“This is good stuff,” he said. “Good stuff.”

Game Seven Might Require A "Special" Tool

Mike Babcock is running out of things to do or say.

He can't spank Marian Hossa and send him to the corner.

He can't make Jiri Hudler and Mikael Samuelsson write, "I promise not to disappear in the Finals again" a hundred times on the chalkboard.

Maybe he can bring a sickle into Joe Louis Arena.

It's a legendary story in Detroit, though more of the cult-like variety.

The Pistons were set to play the Boston Celtics. It was Game Six of the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals. The Pistons, trying to eliminate their longtime playoff nemesis, had won a stunning Game Five victory in the venerable Boston Garden to move ahead in the series, 3-2.

Someone noticed that center Bill Laimbeer was carrying a satchel into the Pontiac Silverdome.

"What's in there?"

"You'll see," Laimbeer said, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.

The Pistons, in what was at the time the biggest game in franchise history, went out and dispatched the Celtics--finally. They would advance to the NBA Finals for the first time ever.

So what was in the satchel?

A sickle.

"We had to cut the head off the snake tonight," Laimbeer said, recalling what he told his teammates as he dramatically withdrew the sickle from his black bag. "As long as the snake is still twitching, you have to cut its head off."

Big, oafish Bill Laimbeer had deftly used three-dimensional metaphor to help inspire his teammates.

The Red Wings have themselves a twitching snake on their hands.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were fit for the slaughter before Game Six. The Red Wings drilled them, 5-0, in Game Five. There was an extra day off before the sixth game. It was a situation in which the Red Wings typically have thrived.

The Penguins spanked them, 2-1, in a game much un-closer than the score indicated.

The Red Wings had failed to lop the snake's head off.

Only tonight, there are two snakes showing up at Joe Louis Arena.

The Penguins probably look at the Red Wings much like the 1988 Pistons looked at the Celtics: older, and on top for too long now.

Time for a new King Snake.

Fitting that hockey sticks, if you look at them the right way, kind of look like sickles themselves.

Two heads are on the block tonight at the Joe: that of the younger, maybe hungrier Penguins, and that of the tradition-rich, Cup-happy Red Wings.

One head gets lopped off. The winner gets to slither around the JLA ice, the Stanley Cup in tow.

"I've actually never played in a Game Seven in the Finals," said the Red Wings' Kris Draper. "This is a first for me."

So there you go--experience is a bunch of hooey tonight.

The Penguins, in fact, have a few players who possess some sort of Game Seven/Finals background. A few more than the Red Wings.

As Casey Stengel once said, "You can look it up."

Game Seven. For the Stanley Cup.

It's what little skaters' dreams are made of.

YOU Try To Figure Out These Stanley Cup Finals! Red Wings A No-Show Until Third Period

OK, so who's the knucklehead who slipped a note to the Red Wings saying last night's game didn't start until 10:20, instead of 8:20?

Nicely done, whoever you are.

In what should have been potentially the biggest night of their season, the Red Wings came out flat as a pancake for Game Six of the Stanley Cup Finals in Pittsburgh Tuesday night.

The 2-1 final score was about as representative of the entire game as the two digits after the decimal point are representative of Matthew Stafford's signing bonus check.

This was Game Six in Anaheim, only worse. How a team as experienced, skilled, and focused as the Red Wings usually are, could come out and lay a big, fat egg onto the Mellon Arena ice surface for the first 40 minutes is beyond me.

Then again, this entire series has been beyond me.

A look back, shall we?

First, we had the back-to-back boogaloo to kick things off: Games One and Two played on Saturday and Sunday in Detroit. This was supposed to be damaging to the older Red Wings, who were only a couple days removed from removing the Chicago Blackhawks from the conference finals.

The Red Wings won both games.

Then we had Games Three and Four in Pittsburgh, and the Penguins were supposed to be deflated and discouraged by their oh-fer in Detroit, despite playing some pretty damn good hockey at times.

The Penguins won both games.

So, naturally, the old, tired Red Wings were in trouble heading into Game Five. They looked staggered; the champs were on the ropes. Maybe one or two more punches could finish them off.

The Red Wings destroyed the Penguins, 5-0. Of course.

The stage was set for Game Six. Bottom-feeding, ink-stained wretches such as yours truly wrote that these stages were made for the Red Wings, or even vice-versa.

With the Stanley Cup in the building, I wrote, there's all the urgency in the world, right there. You didn't even have to manufacture it. Plus, there would be the extra benefit for the Red Wings of an additional day off after Game Five.

So, according to this zany script, the Penguins made the Red Wings look like that old, tired bunch from Games Three and Four.

Care to make a guess about Game Seven?

This series, so far, has been like six different plays of NHL '09 on your Playstation Two. None of the games have anything to do with the other.

It's a Finals series that only a Las Vegas bookie can love.

There's no smart money left. It's all been frittered away.

There really are only two sure things: death and taxes.

Take Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, for example.

The kid looks like a bad seed after some weird goals in Games One and Two. Then he bounces back in Games Three and Four. Then he's so awful in Game Five that he gets the hook.

So Fleury, natch, is the game's No. 1 star in Game Six, even stopping Dan Cleary on a heart-thumping breakaway with about 90 seconds to play.

Fleury is this series in a microcosm.

Want another series myth to bust?

How about the one that says the Penguins can't win if Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby aren't playing in stellar form?

The Pens got goals from Jordan Staal and Tyler Kennedy, and Malkin and Crosby were borderline milk carton material for long stretches. There was a Malkin sighting in the third period--when he was whistled for a penalty.

The Red Wings, meanwhile, played the first two periods as if they expected the Stanley Cup to be awarded to them after the game no matter what.

The Red Wings should have had the sense of urgency of a toddler crossing his legs while his mother dragged him through JC Penney's in search of the nearest bathroom.

Instead, the Red Wings played, maybe, their worst game of the entire playoffs. And I'm talking anything you got, from Columbus to Anaheim to Chicago. I'll even throw in Games Three and Four of the Finals, and I'll still beat it with the Red Wings' performance through the first 40 minutes of Game Six.

They were, simply, awful.

Thank goodness goalie Chris Osgood didn't believe the prank note, for he was the only Red Wing (OK, Henrik Zetterberg, too) who showed up on time.

If it wasn't for Osgood, the Penguins would have matched the Red Wings' five-goal win of Game Five, and maybe even have beaten it.

Detroit had three shots on goal in the first period. Three. About one every seven minutes.

Unless you plan on Fleury having a save percentage of about .566 for the game, then that's not going to cut it.

I'm done with trying to figure these Finals out.

I predicted Detroit in seven, before this goofball of a series began. After all I've been wrong since they dropped the puck to start Game One--and I'm not the Lone Ranger in that regard--I still have a chance to be right in the end.

So it's winner-take-all. There's no tomorrow. All the chips are on the table. One-and-done. Women and children first. Buckle up, it's gonna be a rough ride.

See, there is still something you can count on, between now and Friday night: the cliche train NEVER gets derailed.

Stanley Lurks; Red Wings Know The Drill

Stanley will be in the building. The Red Wings know the feeling.

Been there, done that.

Four times over the past 11 seasons, in fact.

They know what it's like to try to stay focused and play your game while the object of your affection sits crated somewhere behind the scenes at the rink, ready to burst out.

It's not overstating it to say that tonight's Game Six is literally why you dedicate your life to hockey, if you're a player.

It's why you wake up mom and dad at 5:30 a.m. on a wintry morning and remind them that it's time for hockey practice.

It's why you skate to school.

You heard me.

Red Wings great Steve Yzerman admitted to such, not long after he retired. Seems the path to school in Ontario was so icy that Yzerman, on some mornings, could lace his skates up and glide there before the first bell.

It's why you ride the buses and play in places like Peoria and Moose Jaw and Saskatoon and Hershey, all while keeping the dentists in business.

It's why you, if you're lucky enough to make the NHL, drag yourself to the rink to play the Minnesota Wild on a Thursday night in January when you'd rather just have the day off.

You do all that to have the chance that the Red Wings have tonight: to win another Stanley Cup and declare once again, unequivocally, that it was all worth it.

Coach Mike Babcock clarified something after Game Five's 5-0 win, which gave his team a 3-2 series lead over Pittsburgh.

"Everyone says that when you get to the finals that you have a shot at winning (the Cup)," Babcock said. "But you only really have a shot when you've won three games. We've won three games and now we have a legitimate shot."

Hard to argue with that.

It was my firm belief--even though I picked the Red Wings to win in seven before the series began--that if Detroit won Game Five after the whirlwind, 5-games-in-8-nights schedule, that they would take full advantage of the two days off before Game Six and find a way to win a game in Mellon Arena.

I stand by that.

This isn't Game Six of the Anaheim series, way back in the conference semi-finals, when the Red Wings had a chance to close out the Ducks. They played a shockingly lethargic game, and a late flurry of energy wasn't enough.

They had to dispatch the Ducks in the full complement of games. Indeed, almost the full complement of minutes. Dan Cleary scored the game winner with exactly three minutes to go in regulation time.

No, this isn't like that Anaheim series, because the most treasured trophy in professional sports wasn't lurking backstage, ready to be hoisted.

It says here that the Red Wings, buoyed by the extra rest and the continued improvement of a returning Pavel Datsyuk, will find enough in their tank to finally put these Penguins away in Game Six and win a second straight Cup--both in general and in Mellon Arena.

The Red Wings couldn't have made it more tantalizing than they did last year.

Just over 30 seconds remained in Game Five--Detroit up in the series, 3-1--and the Stanley Cup was literally being polished and about to be wheeled onto the ice at Joe Louis Arena.

I was there, notepad and recorder in hand, ready to zoom down from the press box to the ice, when the Penguins scored and an entire arena got slugged in the gut.

A few hours later, Petr Sykora won the game in triple overtime.

So yes, sometimes it doesn't work out, no matter how much the will and the drive is there.

But the Red Wings, not wanting a Game Seven, took care of the Penguins a couple nights later.

Just like, me thinks, they'll do tonight.

It won't be easy. It shouldn't be, when the stakes are this high.

It shouldn't be easy, when the team you're trying to eliminate is the same team you eliminated last year. It shouldn't be easy, when you're trying to win it--again--in their building, in front of their fans.

It shouldn't be easy, when a member of their team is now a member of yours.

If the Red Wings seal the deal tonight, I expect captain Nick Lidstrom, who has the honors of choosing to whom the Cup gets handed first, to pick Marian Hossa from the crowd of happy players with a "come hither" grin.

Last year it was Dallas Drake, the grizzled, about-to-retire veteran who'd never tasted champagne in an NHL locker room. Lidstrom handed Dally the Cup first, much to Drake's delight.

Hossa, who left the Penguins' pile of money on the table last July and signed a one-year, not-risk-free deal with the Red Wings instead, is another veteran who wants to win a Cup before he perishes.

You know, pretty much like every hockey player in North America, from Alberta to Newfoundland, from Maine to Oregon.

I can't imagine how the Penguins fans will react when they see Hossa, whom they've booed relentlessly all series, skating the Cup around the Mellon Arena ice, wearing a Red Wings jersey.

Stanley is in the building, for the first time in this series. And his travel plans are set, no matter who wins tonight: he's headed for Detroit after the game.

The Red Wings just as soon save the Penguins that trip.

Three's a crowd, after all.

D-Day: Red Wings Play Desperate, One Win From Another Cup

Yesterday, June 6, was D-Day, for the nation. The 65th anniversary of the storming of Normandie.

It was also D-Day in The D.

Desperation Day for the Detroit Red Wings.

That was the theme as I traipsed around the locker room following Saturday night's 5-0 shellacking of the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals.

But another D, defenseman Nick Lidstrom, had another D-word for me.

"I think determination also," Lidstrom told me when I asked if desperation was part of the Red Wings' mindset, coming off two less-than-Red Wings-like performances in Pittsburgh in Games Three and Four, which squared the series at 2-2.

"I thought we really stuck to our game plan for sixty minutes," Lidstrom continued. "We got the puck deep into their zone when we had to. All four lines skated really well."

And scored really well, too.

There was a feeling of nervousness from the madding crowd and the air seemed heavy when I walked into Joe Louis Arena last night. It didn't help matters that the Penguins came out of the hopper jumping, looking to carry whatever momentum they had in Pittsburgh into Detroit.

The Pens carried play in the opening minutes, and they got the first power play of the game.

The "uh-oh" feeling at the Joe was kicked up a notch, for the Red Wings' penalty killing in Pittsburgh was about as reliable as the price of gasoline.

The math in Pittsburgh seemed to be this equation: Red Wings penalty = Penguins goal.

Heck, the math even went Red Wings power play = Penguins goal, to show you how tough it was for the Wings in the Steel City.

But the Red Wings got the kill, and the JLA crowd breathed a little more freely.

Then Dan Cleary struck, and it was as if a giant window had been opened, letting millions of cubic inches of fresh oxygen into the building.

Cleary was set by...drum roll please...Pavel Datsyuk.

You know, one of the league's MVP candidates? The guy who hasn't played since the May flowers were still sprouting?

Yeah, him.

Datsyuk glided through the neutral zone, feathered a pass to Cleary, and No. 11 notched his first goal of the Finals when his wrist shot from between the face-off circles eluded Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

It was a stoppable shot, and it, at the same time, both ignited the crowd and made Game Four a more distant memory.

The games in Pittsburgh were the Red Wings' bad dream. The Cleary goal was the waking up.

If this was poker, the Red Wings called the Penguins' monumental second period of Game Four and raised it.

After Thursday's game, I wrote that the Penguins' scoring three goals in 5:37--which turned a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead--might have determined thru which team's hands the Stanley Cup will be passed this summer.

Check that. The Red Wings' second period onslaught likely trumped that.

Three power play goals chased Fleury as the Wings blitzed the Penguins for four goals and a 5-0 lead.

Blitzburgh.

I served up the desperation theme to defenseman Niklas Kronwall, whose sweet curl from the side of the net to the front of the crease culminated in a pretty over-the-shoulder shot that beat Fleury for a 3-0 Detroit lead. Another power play effort.

"Well, absolutely," Kronwall said. "You don't want to go into Pittsburgh with a loss and down 3-2 in the series. We had that first (penalty kill) and our forwards did a great job going after their (defense)."

Cleary echoed the sentiment.

"We knew the importance of the game. We played desperate, we played hard. We didn't sit back. We kept skating, kept pressuring. We knew (the Penguins) would be excited after winning two games at home so we just tried to take that away."

Here's another D-word for you: Discipline.

As in, that thing that the Penguins didn't have much of.

Bad English, but this is hockey, eh?

Look, if certain folks want to accuse the Red Wings of being old (more on that later) and tired after the Pittsburgh games, then it's only fair to jab at the Penguins' relative youth and immaturity.

What's worse, the Penguins' two brightest stars were also their dimmest bulbs when it came to leading by example.

Evgeni Malkin, who seemed to only show up when he was skating to the penalty box, showed, once again, that he has a pretty nasty disposition when things don't go his team's way. He was whistled thrice for penalties, and the Red Wings scored once while Malkin was in the box.

Sidney Crosby, the captain no less, chipped in with an ugly slashing penalty.

Now, as promised, back to this "old" thing, which, if you listen to Detroit coach Mike Babcock, is getting, well, old.

"I keep hearing about how old we are," Babcock said in the post-game presser. "I don't think (Valtteri) Filppula is old. (Henrik) Zetterberg's not old. (Datsyuk) isn't old. (Marian) Hossa isn't old, so who's old?"

Someone from the crowd mentioned 47-year-old Chris Chelios, who hasn't even played in this series.

"Well, yeah, Chelly is older than me, I'll give you that one," Babcock said to chuckles. "But if you take a few guys out, like (Brian) Rafalski and (Nick) Lidstrom, I don't think we're that old.

"I mean, our goalie is 36...," Babcock said with a care-free shrug.

"The big thing for us now are the extra days off," the coach said, referring to the fact that, after this whirlwind schedule, Game Six won't be played until Tuesday. "Age has nothing to do with it. We have two days off and we'll be a better team [in Pittsburgh] and we'll be ready to go."

So there.

Desperation. Determination. Defensemen scoring (Rafalski added a power play marker). Discipline.

Defending champions.

It was most certainly D-Day Saturday, and nowhere more so than in The D, Detroit, on Saturday night.

5:37 Might Decide The Destination Of This Year's Stanley Cup

After four games of the Stanley Cup Finals, few things are certain, other than the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins are square at two wins apiece.

But here's one: five minutes and thirty-seven seconds of the second period of Game 4 are either going to be someone's house of horrors (Detroit's) or simply a really good, exciting stretch of play that turned the home crowd on (Pittsburgh).

5:37.

That's how long it took the Penguins to, all at once, tie the game, lead the game, and take control of the game.

And maybe, just maybe, rescue their chances of winning the Stanley Cup. Or maybe ensuring themselves of winning the Cup, period.

The Penguins were trailing, 2-1. A rather innocent shot from the point had eluded goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in the first minute of the period. In fact, it looked as if Fleury had been screened by his own man.

The crowd was quiet. Nervous, even. The Red Wings, when they get playoff leads and sniff a road win, aren't ones to implode, usually.

Then came those five minutes, thirty-seven seconds.

It started with the Red Wings on, of all things, a power play.

All playoffs, the Wings have bemoaned their penalty kill. It has consistently ranked among the lowest of the teams in the post-season. A Penguin power play in these Finals has too often resulted in a Penguin goal.

But here the Red Wings were, with a man advantage of their own. An excellent opportunity to forge a nice little two-goal lead for themselves.

Turns out the Detroiters had trouble killing off their own power play.

Jordan Staal kicked things off with hockey's equivalent of a knife to the back: the shorthanded goal.

Staal outraced Nicklas Lidstrom down the ice with the puck after a nifty pass from Max Talbot at the Pittsburgh blue line, showing deceptive speed.

Staal then deked goalie Chris Osgood, going backhand-forehand before sliding the puck beneath the netminder, with Lidstrom draped all over the Penguins forward.

It was a back-breaking goal, and one that Osgood, truthfully, should have stopped. Ozzie was way too deep, it appeared on the replays, in his crease and thus gave Staal too much room with which to work. Some aggressive challenging of Staal might have worked better, especially with Staal being harassed by Lidstrom.

That made the score 2-2 and even though the Red Wings remained on the power play, the whole spectre of the game changed, right there.

As the Mellon Arena crowd roared, the Red Wings were reduced to being in survival mode--on their own power play. The Pens killed the rest of it off, and what ensued were several minutes of Penguins pouring over the Red Wings' blue line as if the Detroit zone was the Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving, and the doors had just been unlocked.

Osgood was left hung out to dry as first Sidney Crosby (remember him?), then Tyler Kennedy scored as a result of odd-man rushes. And when I say odd-man rushes, I mean it like, "Where the hell were the Red Wings on that play?"

Speaking of odd-man rushes, I know that Evgeni Malkin is a world-class player and he's not to be trifled with, but I've never seen one player breaking in on a goalie, whether solo or on 2-on-1s, as often as Malkin has in this series.

Malkin has had at least one clear-cut breakaway per game, and the fact that he hasn't scored on them shouldn't soothe the Red Wings. Because if this continues, he's going to stop not scoring and start winning this series all by himself.

Malkin has been dominating in the Finals, almost a man among boys on the ice. The Red Wings have paid so much attention to Crosby that you wonder where "cover Malkin" is listed in the team's playbook.

Because it sure doesn't seem like anyone on the Red Wings has that responsibility, or if he does, he ought to look up toward the clock to see if his jockstrap is hanging from it.

Malkin is killing the Red Wings--or at the very least, inflicting wounds at a devastatingly rapid rate.

These Finals, after the two games in Pittsburgh, are making the Red Wings look like a tired, old team and the Penguins a hungrier, faster, stronger one.

But there's always home cooking.

The Penguins can't win the Cup without winning a game in Detroit, plain and simple. Their best chance to do so would appear to be tomorrow night in Game Five.

Only one day off between games. That ancient word, momentum, supposedly on their side. A maybe tired, dazed bunch of Red Wings facing them.

But home ice can do wonders for a downtrodden team. The Penguins need only to look at themselves to prove that axiom.

They came home to Pittsburgh bemoaning their luck and their fate in Games One and Two.

Look at them now.

I still think the Red Wings have enough to stave off these Penguins (I picked Detroit in seven before the series), but they'll need to do more than just put all their eggs in the home ice basket in order to do so.

They can't get younger, but they can get back to their game.

I counted zero, zip, odd-man rushes in Game One for the Penguins. The Red Wings have to get back to that style in Game Five.

What happened in that 5:37 in the second period of Game Four is just sitting there, like a fat old pimple on the Red Wings' face.

Is it merely a blemish, or the beginning of a total breaking out of hockey acne?

A Sweep? Red Wings Fans Ought To Know That Wasn't In The Cards

For all you Red Wings fans who so much as looked at a broom on Monday and Tuesday, shame on you.

You really thought these Pittsburgh Penguins would be swept out of the Stanley Cup Finals?

Sidney Crosby still hasn't scored a goal, but the Penguins are still waddling.

They've wobbled, but they haven't fallen. Yet.

There'll be a Game Five, after all. There really shouldn't be much of a surprise.

The Pens faced all the tired cliches and directives prior to last night's 4-2 win in Game Three.

Backs against the wall. There's no tomorrow. Must-win.

All that rot.

But they actually subscribed to one of them: Bet on the home team in Game Three, when down 0-2.

It's one of the surest bets in sports.

Game Three is oh, so hard for the team up two-love to get. It's quite the phenomenon, actually.

Even a team as good and successful as the Red Wings have had a devil of a time winning in such scenarios, even against teams far inferior than Pittsburgh.

It's almost a given.

Regardless, I picked the Red Wings in seven, so I certainly wasn't getting my mental broom out, despite the Wings' 2-0-lead-in-24-hours boogie over the weekend.

But it wasn't as if it was fait accomplit, either.

The Red Wings, after 40 minutes, had outshot the Pens 26-11.

Yet the game was tied, 2-2.

The Red Wings have seen that before, and defenseman Brian Rafalski, interviewed by Versus TV during the second intermission, didn't seem fazed.

"We like the amount of chances we're getting. Just keep trying to get the puck in deep and create some offense," he said.

But the penalty kill betrayed the Red Wings last night; they gave up two power-play goals, including the game-winner from defenseman Sergei Gonchar, who's basically playing on one good leg and one that should be elevated in a bed somewhere.

Gonchar got hurt in the conference semi-finals against Washington, missed Games Six and Seven, and played hurt (and not all that well) in the conference finals sweep over Carolina.

But these are the Finals, and these are hockey players, and that recalls efforts like that of Toronto's Bob Baun, who literally played Game Six against the Red Wings in 1964 on a broken leg.

Baun, by the way, scored the game-winning goal in overtime, forcing a Game Seven, which the Maple Leafs won.

OK, so where's Pavel Datsyuk, if hockey players are so tough?

Good question.

The Red Wings' MVP candidate didn't play again, and I can tell you from having seen Datsyuk in the Red Wings' training room after Game One that he was, at that point, still limping heavily on his bad foot.

In fact, I told folks on Twitter and elsewhere not to expect Datsyuk at all this series, unless it requires a seventh game.

Does that mean that Pavel is a wimp?

Not at all.

Baun, as game as he was, played a different kind of game than someone like Datsyuk. Baun was a stay-at-home defenseman who was better able to compensate for his injury.

Datsyuk, on the other hand, is nothing to the Red Wings if he can't pirouette, spin, stop and start on a dime, and do those other fancy-shmancy things on skates that lesser humans can only dream of doing.

In this battle of goalies, Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury got the better of Detroit's Chris Osgood, and knowing Ozzie, he'd probably be the first to admit it.

It's not that Osgood let in any soft goals, per se (although Kris Letang's PP goal in the first period was unscreened and in the "five hole" between Ozzie's pads).

He just didn't make those "Oh my goodness" saves that he made in Games One and Two.

Fleury, on the other hand, was up to the task.

This was MAF's best game in the Finals, by far. No goofy goals off his leg. No knucklers butterflying over his shoulder.

Just good, strong goalkeeping.

So it's 2-1 Detroit, and the broom-thinkers ought to be paddled with a goal stick, square on the seat.

These Penguins aren't as good, I don't believe, as their opponents, but they're not "get swept in the Finals" inferior, either.

Game Four, however, is another story. That's the one that the favorite often gets on the road, to go up 3-1.

Stay tuned.

If you can find Versus on your cable or satellite dial, that is.

Sid the Kid Still MIA; Red Wings Squeeze A Little Tighter

The Stanley Cup, presumably, is still safe and sound in its case in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

The old chalice gets out a lot, but there's time for it to be a shut-in, too.

Its rest, though, is about to be disturbed.

If Sidney Crosby doesn't get it going soon--and by soon I mean now--then the handlers of the Cup will trudge down to its case, lug it out, and pack it away in its metal trunk for a trip to Pittsburgh.

Wednesday morning, as a matter of fact. Day after tomorrow.

For the Cup must be on hand for Game Four at Mellon Arena, just in case, if the Penguins don't find a way to snatch Game Three on Tuesday night.

This is when the Cup gets disturbed and flown from city to city, pending the outcomes of the Finals games.

But the Penguins can grant the most treasured and storied trophy in sports a couple more days rest if they can somehow will the hockey gods to turn their fortunes around soon.

Once again, soon means now.

NBC, the network that, around this time of the year, must stand for Nothing But Crosby, must feel like they just planned and threw a party for a guest of honor who never showed up.

The Detroit Red Wings, once again at the Finals, are using their famous cephalopodic heritage to turn Sid the Kid into Sid the Squid.

No points thru two games, Crosby has, after the Red Wings' 3-1 win in Game Two, an eerily similar experience to Game One.

To wit: the Red Wings' Justin Abdelkader, who 24 hours earlier--almost literally--scored his first ever professional goal of any kind at 2:46 of the third period, scored again, at 2:47 of the third period.

Both goals gave the Red Wings a 3-1 lead in games where the one-goal margin looked about as safe as room temperature mayonnaise.

I'm not sure where one goes to get some puck luck, but the Penguins sure better find some of it, and soon.

Altogether now: soon means now.

The Red Wings, right now, seemed to have stored away a cache of this puck luck when no one was looking, waiting to break it out on a rainy day.

In Game One, it was the trickiness of the Joe Louis Arena end boards and Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's backstabbing leg pads that did Pittsburgh in to the tune of two goals.

In Game Two, the goalposts looked at the Penguins shooters, looked at Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood, and decided that the only things getting behind Ozzie that night would be their support.

The pucks sure didn't, save one.

Bill Guerin hit a goalpost, in the second period. Dead-on the iron.

Crosby hit a goalpost in the third period. But that wasn't all.

Crosby's shot caromed across the goal crease, perilously close to the red line and Osgood's skate, somehow ended up back onto Sid's stick, and he zinged it back into the pile of bodies that had now gathered.

Funny--that's the kind of play that a scorer like Crosby routinely buries. He need only have lifted the puck a few inches, and he would have been on the board and off the schneide.

Instead, NBC has to wait for a Game Five (not so fast) to throw another party for Sid, to see if he graces everyone with his presence.

Games Three and Four are on Versus, the only TV network I know of whose name is also a preposition.

Here's a preposition for you: by.

As in, shouldn't Crosby have scored by now?

"You see him everywhere," Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said at Media Day on Friday, referring to the NHL's pumping of Crosby in its TV ads. "Sometimes I wonder if they know that we won it (the Stanley Cup) last year."

Of course, it's still relative early. Crosby could still go off, and before you know it, this series is tied up.

Could happen.

But the Red Wings have done a masterful job, so far, of bottling up The Kid.

The other Pens superstar, Evgeni Malkin, has a goal and an assist. And a fight.

Frustration boiled over at the end of Sunday night's game, with Malkin asking Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg for a dance.

As is usually the case when two non-fighters scrap, it wasn't much. But it did signal Malkin's frame of mind, and of course the JLA crowd ate it up.

Osgood was phenomenal, again, in the Red Wings' net.

I don't have a vote for the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP), but I have a hunch that Osgood's name is about to be associated with it.

Barring a collapse, the Red Wings will win their second straight Stanley Cup, fifth in twelve years, and 12th in team history. And Osgood, who's been amazing in every round, will be the hands down Conn Smythe winner.

There's no one else even close, frankly.

Ozzie's counterpart, Fleury, is becoming a little goat-ish.

There were the end boards hijinks on Saturday, and Abdelkader's knuckle-puck shot on Sunday fluttered over the goalie's shoulder like a butterfly.

Those are the kinds of goals you simply cannot give up when the stakes are this high.

They say that a best-of-seven series doesn't truly break out until a team wins a game on the road. And, traditionally, Game Three is the toughest for the team that's leading 2-0 to get.

When I spoke to the NHL Network's Larry Murphy after Sunday's morning skate, he told me that Game Two, to him, is the most important game of a series because it's the first game when one of the two teams is facing any adversity.

Using that logic, the Penguins face a ton of it right now.

If they lose Sunday, Murphy told me, "Then the Penguins have to do whatever they can to make some sort of series out of this."

Having the NHL's Chosen One chip in with a goal or two might be nice, if you're a Penguins fan.

Maybe Detroit fans could send Crosby a post card.

Having a great time at The Finals, Sid. Wish you could be here!

"OOB" At the Stanley Cup Finals: 1-on-1 with Larry Murphy, more!

There have been two teams, and two teams only, who have repeated as Stanley Cup champions between 1991 and 2008.
Larry Murphy has played for them both.

Murphy, the Hall of Fame defenseman, was on the Pittsburgh Penguins teams of 1991-92, and, of course, the Red Wings’ back-to-back champs of 1997-98.

I pointed that out to him today and he smiled sheepishly.

“Timing is everything!” he said, laughing.

Murphy, today, is enjoying his broadcasting life after toiling for nearly 20 years in the NHL.

Murphy works Red Wings games for Fox Sports Detroit, and also puts in time for the NHL Network on a national basis.

I nabbed him after the morning skate and asked him his impressions of Game One and the prospects for the rest of the series.

On the Pens in Game One this year as opposed to Game One in 2008: “I thought they were in the series early this time. They played a strong road game, but got a couple bad bounces and the puck ended up in their net. I think they’re realizing that when you play the Red Wings there’s such a small margin for error.”

On the Red Wings’ style of play in Game One, when I suggested that it looked like they played a “road game” in their own building: “That’s how they always play. So much of the Red Wings’ offense is based on playing good defense and the transition game. So it looks like they’re emphasizing defense. You won’t see players hanging out around the center red line, hoping for a turnover. That’s not acceptable here.”

On the Red Wings’ best offensive players also being their best defensive players: “Oh, no doubt! That’s what you want. If you have players who put up big numbers but then don’t do anything for you in your own zone, then it’s a wash. The Red Wings’ star players are always on the right side of the puck.”

On Evgeni Malkin, who Murphy said had to have a good start in this series: “I thought he played well. Last year he never got untracked. Obviously, he would have liked to score on the breakaway, but I thought he was into it. That said, he wasn’t the dominant player that we’ve seen in other rounds. But I think he got off to a pretty good start.”

On Sidney Crosby: “Obviously, he didn’t produce offensively the way he would have wanted, but I thought he was in the thick of things. Don’t forget–he’s going up against Henrik Zetterberg and that’s a tough matchup for any player. It wouldn’t surprise me if (Crosby) came out and got two or three points in Game Two.”

On the Penguins’ mind-set after Game One: “They have to make a series out of this. The longer it goes on, the more the pressure increases. But at least now they have the formula for winning. They just need to go out and do it. But there’s such a small margin for error when you play the Red Wings.”

On the importance of Game Two: “I think Game Two is always important because it’s the first game of a series where one team is facing adversity.”

I wrapped things up by observing that Murphy seems to really be enjoying himself as a broadcaster.

“Oh, it’s a lot of fun.

“One thing I learned is that it’s a lot easier being on the media side of things than being a player. Being a player, it was tough.

“Now I just say, ‘Come on, boys–it’s the easiest game in the world!’”

For other quotes after the Red Wings’ morning skate, go to www.twitter.com/thegregger63 and start scrolling!

JLA End Boards, Role Players Help Wings Capture Game One

The typical NHL shift is around 45 seconds in length.

Sounds easy, right?

Take a spin around the ice for less than a minute, then skate back to the bench for a few, to rest up so you can skate those 45 seconds all over again.

Piece of cake!

Wrong again, hockey socks breath!

Here’s an example of what I saw last night midway thru the third period of Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals at Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings’ Kirk Maltby, when he jumped onto the ice, had his helmet on and his breath inside him.

After those 45-odd seconds had elapsed, it took all that Maltby had to make it back to the Detroit bench.

His helmet was off, spinning around the ice like a curling rock, over in the far corner.

He could barely breathe.

And the JLA crowd ate it up. They roared their approval.

Maltby, plus youngsters Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm, had just spent their 45-second turn making a nuisance of themselves in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ zone.

They created scoring opportunities. They played keep-away with the puck. They took some physical abuse in the process (read: Maltby’s missing bucket).

The Penguins’ defending zone was crawling with Maltby and his young linemates.

It was a grand effort, one that typified the Red Wings’ 3-1 win that nudged them ahead in this finals series, 1-0.

And it didn’t go unappreciated.

After the scintillating, gritty shift, as Maltby willed himself to the bench (he didn’t skate, per se, because skating involves moving the legs one in front of the other, and Maltby couldn’t, so he simply coasted), the partisan crowd got off their feet and gave the trio a rousing ovation.

After the game, I asked Maltby if that shift and the fans’ reaction to it reminded him of the heyday of the Grind Line, on which he played with Kris Draper and Darren McCarty so marvelously in the late-1990s, early-2000s. Won three championships, the Grind Liners did.

“You never like to live in the past, but yeah, this arena is awesome to play in,” Maltby said, appreciating the acknowledgement from the crowd for the hard work–not just on that shift but throughout all those Grind Line seasons.

“The fans are great (in Detroit),” Maltby went on. “They’re very hockey smart. They acknowledge all sorts of big plays, whether it’s a goal, or a hit, or a great save.”

On the way home from the game last night, I was trying to put into words how the Red Wings played, because it wasn’t a typical game for them. Mainly because they seemed to put defense first and offense second.

Then it occurred to me.

The Red Wings had won by playing the perfect road game in their own building.

Shifts like the one Maltby and The Kids had wasn’t the anomaly in Game One.

The Red Wings played it close to the vest, eschewing a lot of their famous puck possession for an emphasis on keeping Pittsburgh superstars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in check.

And, if we stumble upon a scoring chance, they seemed to say, then we’ll address that when the time comes.

Rare was the tic-tac-toe passing Detroit hockey fans have come to know and love. In its place for most of the night was grit and determination. And sticks in the way.

The Red Wings, maybe more so than in any other game this post-season, had their sticks in the passing lanes at seemingly all times.

The result was a severe limitation on the Pittsburgh transition game, which when it gets going can get a little Lakers Showtime on you, usually with Crosby and Malkin playing the parts of James Worthy and Magic Johnson. Or vice-versa.

There were no 2-on-1s for the Penguins. Not even, really, any 3-on-2s.

There was, for all intents and purposes, one odd-man rush–the clean cut breakaway that Malkin had early in the second period.

“Well, you try to get your stick on the puck and try to prevent those cross-ice passes, especially in our zone,” Maltby said when I brought up the Red Wings’ well-placed sticks.

“They have so much offense over there [in the Penguins' dressing room], with obviously Malkin and Crosby and they’re playing extremely well,” Maltby said. ”You can’t let them have any free passing lanes. Sometimes it hits your stick, sometimes it doesn’t, but you just have to make the play as difficult for them as possible.”

This was a grind-it-out win for the Red Wings. They were only 72 hours removed from clinching the Western Conference Finals. ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun bellyached that there wasn’t enough pretty here, and too much ugly to befit the skill level of the two teams’ rosters.

I can see LeBrun’s point, to a degree, but because there’s so much skill, you’re bound to see it emerge sooner or later. It just might not be as wide open or prevalent as what was displayed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Game One’s first period victimized both goalies.

At 13:38, Red Wings defenseman Brad Stuart made a nifty play at the Pittsburgh blue line to stop a clearing attempt, then wristed the puck toward the Penguins net.

The live end boards at the Joe did the rest.

The puck was off the boards and back at Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury quicker than a Jose Canseco MMA fight.

The disc ricocheted off Fleury’s right pad and caromed behind him and over the goal line.

Stuart made no bones about it: sometimes it’s a designed play to shoot toward the net at JLA, instead of directly at it.

“Yeah, you do,” Stuart said with a sly grin when asked if the end boards are purposely used for ricochets. “We know how to play them here.”

Five minutes later, it was Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood’s turn to be red-faced.

Ozzie couldn’t gather in Malkin’s slap shot, and Ruslan Fedotenko made him pay.

As Osgood frantically tried to cover the puck with his trapper, Fedotenko poked it away, moved to his backhand, and neatly deposited the tying goal at 18:37.

The end boards picked up their second assist of the night late in the second period, a period that Maltby said was the Red Wings’ “nervous one, for whatever reason.”

But they survived it, killing off two power plays and dodging a bullet, in the form of Malkin’s breakaway.

Not only did they survive it, the Red Wings took the lead.

Brian Rafalski slammed a shot toward Fleury that went wide. Johan Franzen, the Playoff Scoring Mule, pounced on the lively ricochet and managed to tap the puck over Fleury and into the Pittsburgh net at 19:02.

The Penguins had outplayed the Red Wings in the middle frame, at times pretty soundly, yet still trailed 2-1.

2:46 into the third period, young Justin Abdelkader made a play normally befitting a veteran.

He took a shot near the face-off circle to the left of Fleury, and the rebound flew high into the air.
No one seemed to know where the puck was for a precious second or two.

That’s all Abdelkader needed. He never lost sight of it, and calmly knocked the disc down with his right glove, settling it, and slapping a shot over Fleury’s right shoulder.

“That goal kind of settled us down and enabled us to close the game out,” Maltby told me afterward.

So it’s one-nil, Detroit, and while I still believe this will be a long series, the Red Wings keep getting goals from the Abdelkaders and Darren Helms of the world. That makes them awfully difficult to beat.

And as for playing on back-to-back nights?

“Just get some rest, drink plenty of fluids, and get ready to go,” Stuart said when I asked him how the team would approach playing on Sunday. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Maybe in the regular season, Stewie, but back-to-back games haven’t been played in the Stanley Cup Finals since 1955.

Oh, the Red Wings won the Cup that year.

You know how superstitious hockey people can be.

"OOB" at the Cup Finals: Red Wings Presser

Following are some highlights of the Detroit Red Wings presser, held downtown at the RenCen at 1:45.

Mike Babcock

On injuries: Everyone is ready to go. Pavel Datsyuk is a game-time decision.”

On the schedule: “Well, they don’t ask me, but it seems to me that the NHL could have used more time to hype the series.”

On NBC/Versus commercials for the league: “Sometimes I wonder if they know that we won last year!”

On being at the Finals: “I love seeing how excited the players are.”

On the Finals themselves: “One night you win and you feel like a million bucks; the next night you lose and you feel like you got your heart ripped out.”

On the schedule in the playoffs: “I could have gone bear hunting in the days between some of the games!”

On whether the Red Wings have an advantage in terms of experience: “I think that’s out the window because the Penguins were here last year.”

Nick Lidstrom, Marian Hossa

Hossa

On the Pens: “They’ll be hungrier than last year. And better prepared. Last year (when he was with Pittsburgh) we were at The Finals but we kind of were wondering what was going on. Before we knew it, we were down 2-0.”

On signing with Detroit: “It was a very tough decision but I made it and obviously it was between two teams and they’re the two best teams in hockey.”

On the prospects of playing Pittsburgh in the Finals as the playoffs went on: “I started to realize that we could play the Pens in the Finals as I watched their games. Will be very interesting for me (smiles).”

Lidstrom

On being injured: “It was very hard watching a playoff game.”

On what happened: “It happened during Game Three in Chicago.” (he wouldn’t say what the injury was)

On young guys like Darren Helm and Jonathan Ericsson: “The experience the guys got from last year’s playoffs was key to our success in this year’s playoffs.”

On the playoffs: “Even after 17 years, I still get butterflies playing in the playoffs. I still get nervous.”

On the Finals schedule: “You’re just excited to be here. I don’t think fatigue will be a factor.”

On Ericsson: “‘Johnnie’ doesn’t look nervous in the playoffs. He’s just getting better and better.”

Henrik Zetterberg, Chris Osgood

Zetterberg

On Hossa: “His skating ability and size are big forces. He’s been unbelievable.”

On Sidney Crosby: “He’s a great player. You have to be on your toes when he’s out there or else he’ll hurt you.”

Osgood

On what he’s learned about this year’s Red Wings: “That we can turn it on when we want to.”

On his season: “I wasn’t mentally ready for the season to start. I guarantee that I won’t have a regular season like that again.”

On experience: “We turned it on against Columbus. We didn’t panic against Anaheim. We ran out of gas at the end of Game Five against Chicago but we found a way to win.”

On Finals schedule: “It’s fun once the games start, and the crowd is loud. At this time of the year, you really don’t want to practice. You want to play games.”

On Helm and Ericsson: “I knew they were good. I didn’t know they were that good. They help inspire us older guys to keep up with them.”

On the Pens, 2009 version: “They aren’t trying to score pretty goals as much. Last year they played a lot on the perimeter. This year they’re going to the net and cycling more. And they have guys like [Bill] Guerin, who’ve won the Cup before.”

Therrien Gets The Ziggy, And An Old Axiom Is Re-proved

Fire the coach!

When all else fails -- or even when just a little bit fails.

The Pittsburgh Penguins are the latest NHL team to render the ziggy. Michel Therrien got it Sunday, barely eight months after leading his team to the Stanley Cup Gosh Darn Finals, no less.

If that's what happens to a Cup Finalist less than a year later...

It's easier, they say, to can the coach than change all the players. Even though, ironically, it's probably the players who are the cause for the coaching change to begin with.

Therrien was too tough on his players, it's been theorized. Too strict with the discipline. Too rigid in his insistence that everyone -- EVERYONE -- play defense. Well, the nerve.

Time to change the messenger.

Former football coach Bum Phillips said it best.

"If they want to fire you, they'll think of a reason. You're too nice. You're too mean."

And this: "There's two kinds of coaches: them's that have BEEN fired, and them's that are GOING to be fired. And I've been both."

Therrien's dismissal was accompanied by the usual excuse: his players were beginning to tune him out. Now, Therrien has only been on the job in Pittsburgh since midway through the 2005-06 season, when he took over for Eddie Olczyk, who now gabs into a microphone (and quite nicely, I might add) for network TV hockey coverage. So this was Therrien's third full season -- and the last one of those, as I said, featured a berth in the Cup Finals. Yet three years is like dog years: it might as well be 21, if you're talking about the patience GMs and owners exhibit with their coaches.

Fire the coach!

So that's what you can look forward to, if you're a coach in the NHL. You can look forward to making it to first runner-up, and still end up getting canned less than a year later anyway.

The league has been especially brutal on its coaches this season. We should have seen it coming, when Chicago fired Denis Savard about a week into the campaign. It started then, and hasn't really let up. Tampa Bay gave Barry Melrose about a month. And that after luring him from his broadcast lair, making a big show of it.

Therrien will be replaced by someone named Dan Bylsma, who was minding his own business, coaching the Pens' top minor league affiliate, when Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero called him up to The Show. The replacement of Therrien with the minor leaguer Bylsma is a repeat of how Therrien himself came to be the Penguins' coach; he was coaching in the minors when Olczyk was ziggied. Bylsma, 38, is a former NHL player and assistant coach, and a little research revealed that he was born in Grand Haven, Michigan. Fancy that.

Bylsma immediately started saying things that sounded just like a new coach who's trying to make an immediate imprint, which he is, of course.

"With the strengths we have, we should be able to go into buildings and make teams deal with the quality of players we have at every position," Bylsma was quoted on ESPN.com. "I look at a group that can win games right now, and we need to do that. We can do this, but the players have to believe we can do this."

Yadda, yadda, yadda -- right?

And, as scripted, Shero played the role of anguished executioner thusly: "I didn't like the way, the direction, the team was headed. I've watched for a number of weeks and, at the end of the day, the direction is not that I wanted to have here. I wasn't comfortable, and that's why the change was made."


"I can't quit, you fired me!"


For sure, the Penguins have struggled, especially lately. The straw that broke Therrien's back was a grisly 6-2 loss in Toronto on Saturday -- a game in which the Penguins led, 2-1, going into the third period. Last week I wrote of how feeble the Penguins' effort was when the Red Wings manhandled them in Pittsburgh on national television. So it's not like the Penguins don't have their troubles, because they do. No question. They're having an awful time of it this season, trying to regain that mojo, and the playoffs are beginning to edge further and further from their grasp. Therrien, I'm sure, can't be judged an innocent, either. The buck has to stop somewhere.

It all just serves to re-prove a time-worn axiom -- one succinctly stated by former Pistons coach Earl Lloyd, shortly after becoming coach following Butch van Breda Kolff's self-ziggy way back in 1971.

"It's funny," Earl said. "But when you sign on to become coach, you're also signing your own termination papers.'"

Fire the coach!

It can't hurt...right?

Red Wings' Dismantling Of Penguins Not Surprising

Once again, the NHL's Eastern Conference is chewing up and spitting out the previous spring's conference champion.

Add the Pittsburgh Penguins to the list of vanquished Red Wings opponents in the Stanley Cup Finals who appear to be one-hit wonders.

In 1997, the supposedly big, bad Philadelphia Flyers -- who were going to bully and abuse the Red Wings physically on their way to the Cup -- were swept, rather easily, by Detroit. The following season, the Flyers went one-and-out, losing in the first round of the playoffs in five games.

In 1998, the Washington Capitals somehow snuck into the Cup Finals, and were dutifully dispatched in four games by the Red Wings -- a series whose only drama was in Game 2, a heart-stopping comeback win for Detroit. The next season? The Caps went 31-45-6 and weren't close to making the playoffs.

In 2002, the Carolina Hurricanes were the latest "Cinderella" team to play for Lord Stanley's Cup. After a surprising Game 1 overtime loss in Detroit, the Red Wings flicked the 'Canes off their shoulders in four straight. The following season, the 'Canes sunk to a miserable 22-43-11-6 record.

The 2008-09 Penguins?

The Red Wings lost to the Pens, 7-6, in Detroit in November, but that was clearly a fluke. The Penguins didn't put up much of a fight in yesterday's 3-0 loss, at home, on national TV. One example of why they run the risk of being yet another Red Wings Cup Final victim to fail to make the playoffs the following season could be found in the Wings' final goal, late in the third period.

Pavel Datsyuk skated down the left wing, working against defenseman Kris Letang. Or, shall I say, OUTworking Letang. Datsyuk blasted a shot from the left wing, and after the rebound was kicked out considerably by Marc-Andre Fleury, Datsyuk showed more determination and effort in wrangling the loose puck, then muscling a backhander that trickled through Fleury's pads while Letang made a feeble attempt to stop him. Datsyuk made Letang look like an old man. Earlier, Marian Hossa skated between the circles without much resistance before he, too, deposited a backhand shot past Fleury.

Both goals were the result of one team working harder than the other. And wouldn't you think the Penguins would be the hungrier of the two clubs?

Two things can be culled from yesterday's whipping. One, the Red Wings proved why they should be considered Cup favorites, no matter what those Sharks in San Jose are doing. Why? Because the Red Wings don't cruise. They don't take anything for granted. And they're never truly happy with their game. Second, the Penguins are finding out what a difference a year can make.

To be fair, the Penguins have lost some people, both to retirement and free agency. Not the least of which is goalie Ty Conklin, who is making the Red Wings feel warm and fuzzy that they might have a suitable Plan B in the post-season, should Chris Osgood remain shaky. And of course, the Pens lost Hossa, who almost nightly shows why he's an elite player in this world, or any world.

It all underscores how amazing the Red Wings' past 16 years have been. In just about every one of those 16 springs, you could make a very good case for why the Red Wings are a legitimate Cup contender. Yes, there have been playoff disappointments aplenty, but that doesn't change what the Wings' status was, going in. Sixteen straight playoffs of being a Cup favorite. And these Eastern Conference Cup Finalists can't even make the playoffs just one season later? It can't be because of all the travel; Eastern Conference teams hardly have to even change time zones throughout the season.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, led by their superstar Sydney Crosby, are on the verge of being on the outside looking in come playoff time. This can't make league commissioner Gary Bettman feel very good. To have one of the NHL's faces at home come April has to give him the willies.

But Crosby was another Penguin who was a milk carton candidate Sunday afternoon. His presence on the ice was mainly a rumor. It wasn't just a bad day; it was because of what the Red Wings did to him.

The Red Wings seem to relish these "test" games. They slapped the Chicago Blackhawks down a couple notches at the turn of the year when the young Hawks got too big for their britches. And, with the country watching (well, this is the NHL, so with about 3% of the country watching), the Red Wings girded themselves and totally shut down the Pens, that 7-6 loss now a distant memory, for both teams.

Does a 3-0 win in February mean the Red Wings are going to hoist another Stanley Cup this June, their fifth in twelve years? No. But it sure as hell didn't do anything to weaken their status.

Strong Cup contenders. Again. Seventeen years and counting.

That ain't bad.

Of The Four Recent Red Wings Victims, Pens Most Likely To Be Heard From Again

Sidney Crosby is gone for the summer. School’s out. His final exam performance wasn’t good enough to win the Stanley Cup. And all his young Pittsburgh Penguins schoolmates – those early-20-somethings who did their best to make the Red Wings’ lives spooky during this year’s Cup Finals – are gone with him, perhaps to gather together and raise a cold...soda (Sid’s only 20, don’t forget) and figure out a way to return to the championship round next spring.

The Penguins have the goods to do it, you know.

The Red Wings have sent four teams from the inferior Eastern Conference home for the summer since 1997.

There were the heavily-favored Philadelphia Flyers of ’97 – a big, supposedly fearsome team with a line called the Legion of Doom: wingers John LeClair and Mikael Renberg, and center Eric Lindros. How would the less physical (again, supposedly) Red Wings handle such beasts coming at them in droves throughout the Finals?

Easy. Coach Scotty Bowman just made sure defenseman Nick Lidstrom was on the ice, along with Larry Murphy, whenever the frightening Legion of Doom climbed over the boards. Bowman chose the finesse of Lidstrom and Murphy over the brawn of Vladimir Konstantinov, surprising those experts who had the Flyers winning the series rather handily. And finesse totally shut down the Legion. In fact, that line was so ineffective, the Flyers could have been considered to have Legionnaire’s Disease. The Red Wings swept. The Flyers haven’t been back to the Finals since.

The next year, the surprising Washington Capitals, who seemed to need a couple of games to simply explain their presence in the Finals, were flicked away in four straight games, though it took a classic comeback in Game 2 to assure that. But those Caps were a collection of has-beens and not-quites and fluked their way into the Finals. That team was never heard from again.

In 2002, the Carolina Hurricanes showed up in the final round, and while everyone was still asking, “Who ARE these guys?” the ‘Canes had stolen Game 1 in Detroit in overtime. The Red Wings needed a late goal to force OT and three extra sessions to win Game 3 in Carolina. But the Cup was won in five games, just one over the minimum, and it took the Hurricanes four more years to return to the Finals (they won it in 2006), and today they cannot be considered a good bet to do it again anytime soon.

But these Penguins, these young, high-scoring, physical Penguins, are sure to break the string of vanquished Red Wings opponents in the Finals who are never heard from again. In fact, don’t be surprised if by next Memorial Day we’re around our grills talking about a Red Wings-Penguins rematch. And continue to not be surprised if the other team wins it in 2009.

There’s Crosby, for one. His initials match the Stanley Cup’s, and it will be oh-so-appropriate by the time Sid the Kid’s career is over with – sometime in the year 2025 or so. Crosby, though crammed down an unsuspecting public’s throats by the league and its minions and propaganda machine (which includes the National Broadcasting Company), is indeed the real deal. He’s as close to the next Wayne Gretzky as the NHL is ever going to get – both in terms of sheer talent and potential to win multiple championships.

Crosby is the face of the NHL -- the closest thing to Gretzky since, well, Gretzky

There’s goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who didn’t have the best game of his career in Game 6 but who was the reason there was a sixth game to begin with, thanks to his 55-save performance in Game 5’s epic battle. He’s young, as all the Penguins seem to be, and there’s no reason why he can’t keep it up. There’s Evgeni Malkin, who was terribly disappointing in the Finals but who was terrific leading up to it, and actually showed some signs late in the series against Detroit that he was just a player in a slump at the worst possible time, and was about to break out of it. It gives me the creeps to think of what he may have done in a Game 7.

No need for me to rattle off other names from the roster. The ages are the first thing you should look at if you happen upon a listing on the Internet. Lots of 20s under the age column.

These Penguins more closely remind me of the Edmonton Oilers of 1983 than any other Cup-losing team since then, if you want to know. The ’83 Oilers lost in the Finals to the New York Islanders, who by beating Edmonton had just won their fourth straight Cup. And those Oilers were basically the same core who went on to win five Cups in the next seven seasons. The same Oilers led by Gretzky. The Oilers of Paul Coffey, Mark Messier, Kevin Lowe, and the rest. The 2008 Penguins may have lost a Cup, but something tells me they gained a future.

If I was Pittsburgh coach Michel Therrien – who must dump some of the whining and crying if he’s to raise his game to another level, by the way – I’d be sure to remind my players of how they turned what was looking to be a snoozer of a Finals series into one that won’t be forgotten for a long time, if ever. I’d affix it into their skulls that after being shutout in Games 1 and 2 in Detroit, hardly anyone thought the series would last to even a fifth game. But the Pens, who had breezed through the first three rounds without any adversity or angst, picked themselves off the mat, won two of three, and suddenly a series had broken out. The TV ratings confirm how much interest there was, despite those first two games that were all Detroit.

Yes, I’d say these Pittsburgh Penguins did more than just scare the bejeebers out of the Red Wings and their fans during the past couple of weeks. They arrived. And they’re not just passing through, like so many of the pretenders who’ve fluked their way to the Finals and lost, never to be heard from again. Uh-uh.

Lemieux The Reason We Don't Say "Kansas City Penguins"

There wasn't much to like about the Pittsburgh Penguins, much less love, when Mario Lemieux joined them in 1984. They were a 17-year-old franchise with a history that mirrored that of a 17-year-old kid: growing pains, some Terrible Twos, a period of petulance, followed by maddening apathy. Its parents wondered when it was going to quit being lazy and do something with its life. Once, the team was even given a 3-0 series lead in the playoffs and managed to fritter it away like an allowance.

Then along came Lemieux, and the Penguins were relevant again. They grew up, and married the Stanley Cup in 1991, at the age of 24. Pretty much on schedule. They had a second honeymoon with the Cup a year later.

Lemieux saved the Penguins franchise back then, and he saved it again, nine years ago, when there were whispers that the Pens, having cash flow problems and deep in debt, would relocate. But Mario Lemieux, cancer survivor and Mr. Pittsburgh Hockey, would have none of it. He wasn't going to allow his franchise to move after already once bringing it back from the brink. So he did what most of us would do, if we had the dough: he bought the team.


Pittsburgh hockey -- past, present and future; Lemieux is both of the first two; Crosby is both of the second two


Lemieux, into his first retirement as a player, became owner in the fall of 1999, only after insisting that all the creditors to which the Penguins owed cash, were paid in full. He also vowed that the team would never leave Pittsburgh.

Then he came back a couple years later and played some more, hanging on until halfway thru Sidney Crosby's rookie season -- retiring for good in January 2006. And by that time those Penguins-to-relocate winds had started to blow again. And again Lemieux rode to the rescue.

In 2003, the team was back to its pre-Lemieux ways of losing in bunches, and attendance was plummeting. It was said that the good folks of the midwest, in Kansas City, were ready to welcome the Penguins with open arms -- should there be a breakup in Pittsburgh. But Lemieux again ensured that the Penguins would never leave. He acknowledged putting the team up for sale, but only with the proviso that it remain in Pennsylvania. There was no way Mario Lemieux would let his hockey team move to Missouri, to a town that had tried and failed once already as an NHL entity.

Should the Penguins somehow upset the Red Wings in the Finals, Lemieux will have pulled off quite a trifecta: winning the Cup as a player, buying the team, and then winning the Cup as its owner.

Mario Lemieux is why there's hockey in Pittsburgh. It was true in 1984, and it's even more so today.