Be Like Tike

Thursday, June 5th, 2008 by Adam Wagner

Penguins fall to Wings in Six

The Penguins were never the better team in this series. The Red Wings always had crisper passes, played better defense and took more shots. In that sense, it was amazing that the Penguins won two games, but after losing to the Red Wings 3-2 on Wednesday night in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, giving the Wings a 4-2 win in the series, the loss still feels like a heartbreaker.

After Petr Sykora scored his goal in the third overtime of Game 5, we could be excused for thinking that the Penguins had a chance. After all, our goalie was playing better and the Red Wings would be tired heading into Game 6. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out that way as Marc-Andre Fleury didn’t play his best game in net, giving up two ridiculously easy goals, one to Valtteri Filppula and the other to Henrik Zetterberg. Both times, the issue was that Fleury just didn’t stop the puck between his legs, instead letting it trickle through and, eventually, over the goal line.

To blame Fleury for this loss, however, would be ridiculous. The Penguins did miss several golden scoring opportunities and clearly looked like a team that was ready for its season to end, which is to be expected in NHL games in the beginning of the June. Sergei Gonchar (who scored a goal) played well despite a bad back, Evgeni Malkin finally played something approaching his game and Petr Sykora didn’t look too bad.

This series, though, was about the Red Wings just flat-out being a better team despite the special makeup of the Penguins. Yes, the Penguins had a ton of star power and all of the little pieces, but Detroit had the lock down defense as well as the potentially high-powered offense and the forechecking game to negate whatever advances the Penguins made. These were evident all throughout the series and again in Game 6.

The Penguins put up the best fight that they could, which actually proved to be somewhat better than that which they had been expected to put up, but all of their toughness was just outmatched by Detroit’s skill. This was even evident in the final seconds of the series as the Penguins mounted one final charge that had all of their fans thinking “What if?” only to see it fail on the left pad of Chris Osgood.

Seeing the Penguins sit on and around the ice, completely spent, just holding their sticks in their hands looking exhausted, was an awe-inspiring site. Pittsburgh knew that its team had given its all to win the series and that, despite coming short, our team still deserved to be honored. There was no feeling of being short-changed or anything like that, even if the first time the Stanley Cup was won in Pittsburgh was by a visiting team.

The hometown kids deserve a pat on the back. The business of keeping the success going can begin in a few weeks, but for now the players and coaches can sleep tight, knowing that even if they didn’t come out victorious, they have represented their city and themselves better than much of the world expected.