Back on the Block

Yes, I know it's been a while since I shared my thoughts on the NHL, but the vacation I had 2 weeks ago was too good and the Summer started creeping in and I just care a little bit less about daily content until free agency.

Nevertheless...

I'm dead split on my opinion about the Stanley Cup Finals, particularly Game 7 in Detroit two Fridays ago.

One part of me says it's a great tribute to the balance the club has on its forward lines as well as to the new coaching style of Dan Bylsma that the Pens did not freeze in a deciding game on the road.

It wasn't Sid or Geno or even Guerin who lifted the club to victory, but a pair of goals from, of all people, Max Talbot. That, and the oft-promised but never-shown brilliance of Marc-Andre Fleury - demonstrated at no greater time than when he smothered Nik Lidstrom's open chance from the left circle with four seconds remaining.

The team itself played disciplined, tough, patient and opportunistic hockey, all without resorting to a blatant trap. And yes, they had a suspicious amount of luck on their side, as in, not having a shorthanded situation until the third period or...that deflection with 2 1/2 minutes left that clanked off the crossbar behind a frozen and unaware Fleury.

But...the other part says the defending Stanley Cup champions unleashed a choke job unlike any I've seen since I started watching hockey in 1984. A Game 7, on home ice, to defend a title that was well within reach, and Detroit came up very small. It was the first time since 1971 that a team with home-ice lost in a Cup Final Game 7, but that club, the Chicago Blackhawks, was far inferior to the Canadiens of the period. These Wings had a similar high-powered, stocked roster, the comfort of Hockeytown, the confidence of a title from the previous year, and the knowledge of the same team they beat and couldn't pull it off.

Chris Osgood might really never live down his rep as a choker, since both goals he let up were ugly. The first, he could have closed any part of his body to stop Talbot's wraparound. On the second, he hugged the near post, but left exactly ALL of the far side open for Max to roof it.

I think the edge really goes to the regime change behind the Pens' bench. Michel Therrien probably would have called everyone some mangled Franglish names to the media after losing that horrid Game 5. Instead, Bylsma instituted the same kind of calm one-for-all approach (the kind John Stevens probably is too un-self-aware to wish he possessed) which produced the last two narrow wins.

Oh, yeah, and...forget about Marian Hossa. His "spurning" of the Pens for a one-year deal with the Wings was not the real storyline. Rather, it was his continued, yearly shrinkage into the rink ads which defines his true measure as a player. You can't tell me he wouldn't have been equally useless to Pittsburgh if he had remained on the other side.