A Tale of Two Cities

Charlie Klein

In the series that no one seems to be paying attention to, there is some very interesting hockey being played. I guess we do not hear anything about it because the Stanley Cup Finals get sandwiched in between extreme logging and bass fishing and the only person to blame for that is Gary Bettman. I will, however, bite my tongue and save my Bettman rant for a different post. Hockey when it is played in the way it has been by the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings is a treat to watch. One of the more interesting trends throughout this series is the impact of home ice advantage.

Three games in Detroit: Game 1 (DET win), Game 2 (DET win), Game 5 (DET win)
Two games in Pittsburgh: Game 3 (PIT win), Game 4 (PIT win).

Not only has neither team been able to win games on the other's ice, but none of the games have really been close. Detroit has outscored Pittsburgh 11-2 in Detroit and Pittsburgh has outscored Detroit 8-4. If a person were to have only watched the games played in Detroit or Pittsburgh, they would seriously wonder how the other team had won a game at all.

The problems that Detroit had in Pittsburgh, particularly those they experienced on the penalty kill were not an issue at all in Game 5. A lot of credit surely belongs to Pavel Datsyuk's return who ignited his team and the crowd early on in the game by laying down a great hit on Evgeni Malkin. As Barry Melrose remarked, few teams can just insert a Hart Trophy Finalist four games into a Stanley Cup Final. The Penguins did not look like they even had a remote chance of winning that game in Detroit, as the Wings poured it on putting five goals behind a subpar Marc Andre Fleury. In the Eastern Conference Finals Fleury was a completely different player. In these Finals he has let down the entire city of Pittsburgh by his performances.

Surely a team with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin on it is never truly finished until all seven games are played. One has to figure that the Penguins will put up more of a fight in Game 6 in front of their home fans. The way this series has gone, one would be correct in placing a nice bet on the Penguins to win at home. Energy players like Matt Cooke and Maxime Talbot definitely will be amped to be playing in this kind of game and I would expect the Penguins to come out and quickly seek to take the early lead.

And yet surely a team with Nik Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Marian Hossa, Pavel Datsyuk, and Johan Franzen should be able to make their 3-2 advantage pay. Even if the Penguins are able to force a game seven, their play in Detroit has done little to suggest that they will be much of a match for the Red Wings.

That leaves us once again with the Detroit Red Wings lifting Lord Stanley's cup once again. Personally having a team repeat does not say so much about the league as it does about the job that Mike Babcock & Co. have done in assembling arguably one of the best teams (over the past few years) that the NHL has ever seen.

Charles Dickens sums up adequately the state of the NHL and the way the Finals have gone for both teams. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."