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 August 20, 2008
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I Lost a Betby Michael Menser Dell, Editor-in-Chief
The Detroit Red Wings are the best hockey team in the world. Chris Osgood is a great goaltender. I am an idiot for ever doubting them. They're great, and I'm stupid. Congratulations to the Red Wings. They earned it. They're the tops. They teach me new things every day. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never be as cool or as wicked awesome as those great and glorious Red Wings. All hail Detroit. Let's go Wings. Yeehaw. Let's go Wings. Good enough? The Red Wings won their eleventh Stanley Cup in franchise history with a thrilling 3-2 win in Game Six at the Igloo last night. And as listeners of the LCS Hockey Radio Show know, I made a bet with reader Matt Diggs prior to the playoffs. I said there was no way in hell the Red Wings would ever win the Stanley Cup with Dominik Hasek and Chris Osgood in goal. I was misinformed. That opening paragraph there was part of the bet. But the worst is yet to come. I also promised Matt that if the Wings won the Cup, I would run nothing but Detroit Red Wings logos on LCS all summer. Aw, I feel sick. What the (sunshine) happened?!? How could those filthy, oh, I'm sorry, great Red Wings win the Cup? Chris Osgood? Really? I figured it was a sucker bet. I thought the Wings were too soft to get past Anaheim, Calgary, or San Jose. Matchups make fights. And all three were bad matchups for the Wings. But it never happened. Detroit got the equivalent of two byes, facing the AHL Predators in round one and the MASH unit that was the Colorado Avalanche in round two. Fortunate, yes, but they earned it. They won the President's Trophy for a reason. So they don't have to apologize for beating the teams they did. I was desperately hoping Dallas would save the day. Yeah, that's right; I even sided with that weasel Mike Ribeiro in an effort to derail the Wings. What has become of me? Kid Crosby was my only hope. Surely, my beloved Pittsburgh Penguins wouldn't let me down. They'd stop the evil red menace, right? Wrong. Alas, even the valiant Arctic Birds fell short. But they certainly didn't let me down. The Penguins gave it all they had. They battled right to the very end, doing everyone in the Steel City proud. If not for the unluckiest bounce I've ever seen, we could all be preparing for a classic Game Seven Saturday night. It wasn't meant to be. In the end, the better team prevailed. Nay, the best team prevailed.
TURNING POINT After Fleury's performance in Game Five, it was vital for the Wings to get on the board early. The Flower had definitely taken root in their heads. They were probably thinking they'd never score again. Rafalski ended that nonsense quick like a bunny. But the true turning point may have come a few minutes later when penalties to Dallas Drake and Kris Draper handed the Penguins a two-man advantage for a minute and 33 seconds. The turning point of the series was Pittsburgh's inability to cash in on a five-on-three in Game Four. They obviously need more than one lesson. They again failed to find the twine, surrendering all momentum to the Wings. The futility became all the more glaring when Valtteri Filppula made it 2-0 at 8:07 of the second. Like in Game Four, Mike Babcock rolled with the Team Sweden All-Stars to kill the five-on-three. Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, and Nicklas Lidstrom drug the power play out into the alley and shot it in the head. "Well, of course it was huge," said Zetterberg. "It's not the first time they had a two man advantage. Of course, it was a great opportunity for them to score. But we battled through it. And we kept the puck outside the net." If Pittsburgh gets a goal there, it's a brave new world. But they didn't, so it wasn't.
Geno even finally got on the board, blistering a slap shot through Osgood on the power play at 15:26 of the second to make it 2-1. He registered five shots on the night. Where was he the rest of the series? Kid Crosby did his job. He played hard every shift and basically neutralized the Zetterberg and Datsyuk line at even-strength. Malkin was supposed to be the difference in the series. It turns out he was the difference, but not in a good way. After watching him turn down shots and shy away from contact all series, I was convinced Malkin was hurt. As it turns out, he was rather violently ill at the start of the series. At least it was nice to see Geno go out with a strong effort. "At the beginning of the series, I didn't play my best games, and I was pretty nervous with what to expect," said Malkin through a translator. "And more at the end of the series, I feel big help from my coaches, from my teammates, who just helped me out and I'm kind of I feel like I've come down and I start feeling a bit better."
Fleury did absolutely nothing wrong on the play. Now, the Filppula goal was garbage. He can't give up that rebound. But what else was he supposed to do on that Zetterberg goal? In case you missed it, Zetterberg busted into the left circle and used Sergei Gonchar as a screen before firing a hard wrist shot on net. Fleury made the initial save, but the puck rattled around between his right arm and body, eventually dropping to the ice behind him. And the puck died right there. It wasn't sliding towards the goal line. It was nailed in place. Fleury thought he had it. Gonchar and Brooks Orpik thought he had it. The Red Wings thought he had it. The only person who knew he didn't have it was the ref standing behind the net. Not hearing a whistle, Fleury figured the puck must be behind him, so he did exactly what goaltenders are taught to do. He dropped to the ice and laid down on his back to smother any loose biscuit. He didn't flail with his arms. He didn't turn around and accidentally knock it in with his stick. He did everything by the book. Unfortunately, when he sat down, he fell directly on the edge of the puck, causing it to squirt into the cage. It was the unluckiest thing I've ever witnessed in hockey. Think about it. If the referee isn't in perfect position, if he's five feet to the left or right, the whistle gets blown and the play's dead. If Orpik glances down, he sees the puck and easily tucks it under Flower. The puck was in exactly the wrong place. Another fraction of an inch in any direction, and it wouldn't have tipped up on its side and rocketed into the net when Fleury sat down. It was the perfect storm of terrible luck. Fleury didn't do anything wrong. He did exactly what he's supposed to do in that situation. It was bad luck. There's nothing you can do about it. This isn't Steve Smith. This was merely an unfortunate turn of events. Don't blame Flower. I mean, it's not like he knew I'd have to run Red Wings logos all summer. "We told him if there's one thing, to hold your head, because we wouldn't be here without him," said Ryan Whitney of his netminder. "And he's our MVP in the playoffs." If the words of Whitney and his other teammates weren't enough encouragement, Fleury also heard it from good ol' 66. "Not just the series, but the whole playoffs," said Mario Lemieux when asked if Fleury was Pittsburgh's best player of the Finals. "He's been our best player and gave us a chance to win." Hear, hear.
"It was pretty exciting on the bench," said Ryan Whitney. "We all said, one more; we made it 3 2. We came in to tie it up. And obviously it doesn't mean anything now, but it was a pretty great effort to try to tie it up there." Pittsburgh cranked it up from there, taking it to Detroit with a vengeance over the final 1:27 of regulation. When the Wings cleared the puck back to center with only five seconds left, all looked lost. But the Birds never quit. Gonchar fired a pass up to Malkin on the left wing. Geno quickly gained the stripe and one-handed the puck behind two Detroit defenders to Kid Crosby streaking into the slot. Sid hurriedly whipped a laser rocket backhander on net. Osgood got it with his left arm, but the rebound hopped behind him. Hossa drove the cage and whacked the loose puck with one-hand, sending it careening through the crease as the horn sounded. Dang. "It was chaotic the last 40 seconds," said Chris Osgood. "We had it out of the zone with 10 seconds left, and they made a great play. They have a really good team. Crosby was flying. I knew it was a good backhander. I tried to get as far out as I could, and it ended up hitting my arm. I think time had run out before it started rolling over the side of the net. I was happy to see the ref yell time was up when I looked up." That makes one of us.
"Someone said to me here earlier, you turned your best offensive players into checkers," said Mike Babcock. "I never did that. They're just very good both ways, and deliver offensively. And that's the philosophy I have, anyway. I believe if the people that are playing against the best people can score, they have to worry about them. "If you've got guys who don't score playing against those people, they can just let it go on offense all the time. Zetterberg and Pavel are two of the best players in the world. And when you put Rafalski and Nick on the ice with them, I mean, that's a pretty special group. "And Crosby and Hossa gave us all we could handle, and yet it was great to see us, obviously, get this done."
Babcock was a maestro, brilliantly orchestrating the line matchups he wanted even though he was on enemy ice. The biggest mismatch of the series was behind the bench, and it eventually doomed Pittsburgh. I don't want to bury Therrien. He had a good series, for Michel Therrien. But he was outclassed. Babcock is the best. And he was classy in victory. "Well, I can tell him that he's won at the Junior level and Minor Pro level and now he's a winner at this level," said Babcock of Therrien. "He's going to get his opportunity. And coaches don't get here by accident. And you need good players, and he knows what he's doing. He's done a good job. In the time he's been here, he's made a huge difference. You don't get here without being a big believer in yourself, and he's obviously that. He did a heck of a job, and he should be proud of himself and his team."
Chelios didn't play a single second of the Finals. He watched his teammates bust their ass for six hard-fought games, including a grueling three-overtime defeat. He already has his name on the Cup twice, once with Montreal in 1986 and once with the Wings in 2002. Yet he somehow finds the sack to take the Cup before the rest of his teammates. Unbelievable. Tell me another NHLer who would have done that? He should have waited in the background and taken his turn after all the real hockey players went. Screw Chelios in the ear.
"It was tough," said Osgood. "I mean everybody says we dominated the first two games. We shoot a lot. We shoot from the outside for rebounds. We score goals like tonight. But the first game was 2 0 with four minutes left, the same with the second game. The other four were all one goal games played to the last second. They had a very good young team. "It was tough. They're a quick fast team that's big, and we had to battle every single game to get out of the series." The Pittsburgh side agreed. "I'm almost speechless," said Michel Therrien. "It's tough. We were that close. It is really tough, because this is a group that gave what they got. They deserve a lot of respect. We got beat by a quality team. They showed it all through the regular season and through the playoffs. They played really well. They were tough to play against, and the hockey god was not on our side tonight. But they deserved to win the Stanley Cup."
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