Elation, Agony as Penguins Win Classic

DETROIT -- Extraordinary. Wait, that word isn't grand enough to describe what happened here Friday night. Thrilling? Stunning? It was both, and so much more. It was babyface goalie Marc-Andre Fleury making a couple of huge saves in the final, throat-clutching seconds. It was Sidney Crosby lifting the silver chalice and kissing it once, twice, barely buckling under his twisted knee. It was heavy-handed Maxime Talbot scoring a pair of improbable goals, while Evgeni Malkin raised his game to an entirely different level.

It was Marian Hossa dropping to his knees in sorrow, the pain that accompanies having to watch another team celebrate on his home ice for the second straight season almost unbearable. It was Chris Osgood, dazzling in goal, but not dazzling enough. It was a wave of wing-wheeled, veteran Europeans pushing the reigning champions as hard as they could be pushed, and the young, energetic pups in black refusing to budge.

It was Pittsburgh 2, Detroit 1, the Stanley Cup changing hands in spectacular fashion.

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Imagine, Mr. Stanley and Mr. Lombardi, landing in Steel City in the same calendar year. Imagine, the Penguins, so far behind the pack just a few months earlier, taking a Game 7, in the building that houses hockey's premiere franchise, and doing it without the services of Crosby, the franchise, for much of the evening.

"I'm a little surprised how quickly they got it but I'm not surprised how good they became," said Dan Bylsma, the rookie coach who took over on Feb. 15 for the fired Michel Therrien, when the Penguins languished in 10th place in the Eastern Conference. Behind Bylsma, the Penguins finished the regular season on an 18-7 tear, erased two 2-0 playoff series deficits, won a pair of Game 7s on the road and proved peach fuzz doesn't buckle.

The Penguins wore T-shirts that read "The Pen's in Your Hand" under their jerseys, a slogan coined by their coach after he implored his players to write their own stories, their own astonishing ending. The final chapter was a cliffhanger, a faceoff in front of the Pittsburgh net with six seconds remaining, the teams separated only by a skinny goal. The puck worked around Detroit sticks, until a shot by Brian Rafalski rebounded and found Nicklas Lidstrom, who closed in from the left side.

With the blood red crowd on its feet and screaming for overtime, for the Wings to continue their magic ride, Fleury dove across the crease and blocked Lidstrom's bid, authoring a brilliant ending to another climatic finish. Fleury was supposedly spooked by Joe Louis Arena, his 5-0 loss in Game 5 here a memory some wondered if he'd ever escape. But it was his 25-save performance Tuesday in Game 6 at home that forced a return trip to Detroit, and after he turned back the final Detroit wave Friday, after he had time to digest his 23 saves and close calls, he choked back a few words and blinked away a few tears.

"There wasn't much time left. I had to get my body out there and hope the puck hit me. It did, in the ribs. It's just really emotional right now," said Fleury, the soft-spoken netminder they call Flower. His demeanor and his nickname belie his true self, because this is a goalie whose toughness and staying power proved to be the tipping point of the series.



There were tears and emotional gut-checks on both benches, the toil of seven super-intense, physical games finally hitting home. The Red Wings' season was rife with injuries and hardship, and now they were playing with an added weight of a city struggling under record unemployment rates and economic despair. While coach Mike Babcock never exactly implored his players to win it for the people, he alluded many times during the series to the city's hardship, and how another title could inspire joy.

"Well, we got beat by a very good team. There shouldn't be any shame in that," said Babcock, the Wings' bid for their fifth championship in 12 seasons falling just short.

A surprisingly large contingent of Pittsburgh fans showed up at The Joe, hoping to see Penguins win their first Cup since 1992. They fell hush in the second period when Crosby, the captain and heir apparent to (soon-to-be) Sir Lemieux, was crunched along the left-wing boards by Johan Franzen. Crosby's knee appeared twisted, and he half limped, half glided into the trainer's room. He returned in the third period, took one shift, and spent the final interminable minutes on the bench, gritting his teeth.

"It was so painful, being a captain and seeing what the guys are doing out there blocking shots," Crosby said. "You get to the point where you've got to ask yourself whether you're going to be hurting your team by being out there. They gave me as much Novocain as they could, but I couldn't go."

But when it came time for Commissioner Gary Bettman to present Lord Stanley to Crosby, at 21 the youngest captain to win the Cup, The Kid's aches miraculously disappeared. There is no elixir quite like lifting hockey's most sacred prize. He kissed it, kissed it again, skated on air for a few seconds, then handed the Cup off to Bill Guerin, the old goat who won his first title 14 years ago and still somehow manages to keep pace with the frenetic Penguins.

Eventually it was Malkin's turn to hoist the gleaming hardware. Malkin is the yang to Crosby's yin, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player. The Penguins' energy, speed and savvy all flow from the irrepressible Malkin, who never stopped imploring his teammates to jump on the slow-starting Wings and wear them down with strong forechecking and early goals. He led the playoffs with 36 points, including an assist on the first tally Friday.

"Best day of my life," Malkin kept saying, through tears and hugs and primal screams.

And yet, even with Sid and Geno, superstuds 1A and 1B, it made perfect sense that Pittsburgh's two goals came from the 25-year-old Talbot, whose hands are made for thumping, not scoring. After making a fine read on Detroit defenseman Brad Stuart, who was attempting to move the puck into the middle of the ice, Talbot forced the puck loose and fired it under Osgood's pads at 1:13 of the second period.

Another Stuart mistake led to Talbot's second goal at the 10-minute mark. Talbot trapped Stuart trying to pinch along the boards, the puck sprung loose, and Talbot broke in on a two-on-one rush. He fired a perfectly angled shot from the middle of the left circle, the puck finding the tiny open space on Osgood's glove side.

"I still have bad hands," Talbot said. "These two goals don't improve my stick handling skills. Like Geno said, I still have to work on it during the summer."

Detroit made it a one-goal game with 6:07 remaining in the third, Jonathan Ericsson one-timing a bullet past Fleury. With two minutes and change left in the season, Niklas Kronwall hit the crossbar, luck not on the side of the Red Wings.

"We nipped them last year and they nipped us this year," Osgood said. "It is hard for people to believe. We don't take winning for granted. We know how hard it is. We do have a good team but it's very, very difficult to win in this league. We were pushed every series."

Osgood shrugged, for what more could he say? A nip there, an inch here, and this Game 7 bout might have ended differently. It was a fitting omen when Muhammad Ali appeared in the first period, wearing a Red Wings' jersey. He stood slowly, waving weakly to the adoring crowd. Players from both teams banged their sticks on the boards, honoring the boxing champ. Then they resumed their heavyweight battle, fighting until the very last second.

Detroit's loss stung especially hard for Hossa, who ditched the Penguins after last year's Cup loss and signed a free-agent deal with Detroit, for less money, because he thought the Wings gave him a better shot at finally winning a championship. Hossa, who had no goals in the series, said he hadn't any regrets, because one bounce of the puck might have changed everything.

"Sometimes you make choices," he said. "I still had a great year in this organization. If you score one more, you can celebrate, but if not, they're celebrating. That's life. You just have to move on."

You wonder, as he moved through the line shaking his old teammates' hands, what Hossa was thinking of these peach-fuzzed wunderkinds. You wonder, as the sweat dried on this extraordinary, thrilling, stunning game, if the Penguins truly believed they would reach these heights back in February, when their season was so bleak.

"Oh, but we did," said Malkin. "We just had to do lots of things to get to this moment."

Crosby had made a point of never getting near the fabled Cup before Friday night. He wouldn't touch it, wouldn't have his picture taken next to it, wouldn't go to parties if the Cup was going to be on display. He'd sometimes look at the picture, taken on June 1, 1992, of Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr smiling wide as they hoisted the Cup together, and he'd wonder if maybe there would someday be a snapshot of him and Malkin doing the same. But until then, said Crosby, it would be wrong to touch the precious Cup.

The Penguins had plenty of superstitions: they kept changing hotels in Detroit, hoping to find one with lucky beds; Crosby altered his pre-game habit Friday, deciding to address the media after the morning skate from the podium, rather than near his locker; and of course Bylsma, who started the season coaching the AHL's Wilkes-Barre, brought his pre-game meal from Pittsburgh, a burrito with hot sauce and cheese, packed on ice.

"Dream come true," said Crosby, after hoisting the Cup and handing it off on a procession that will last throughout the summer. "It just feels so good. This is exactly how you picture it, what you play for."

Extraordinary. It really was.