Garret Craig

Shocked? Devastated? Call it anything you want. The Red Wings and their fans left the JLA after 12:30am this morning, tired and wounded.

Back to the third period; The Red Wings clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Joe Louis Arena loud as ever, singing chants of “We Want Cup!”. Michel Therrien calls Fleury to the bench with a little over a minute left in a last stitch effort to keep their season alive. With the Stanley Cup in the building, the Detroit Red Wings were seconds away from winning it all. Then….. BAM! 30 seconds on the clock, and Maxime Talbot stuffs in a rebound and the Red Wings and Penguins are back to square one. The crowd was silenced, and the Penguins had squashed the phenomenal momentum of the Wings.

It was off to Overtime #1. Detroit out-shot the Pens 13-2, but Fleury was incredible, keeping the game even. In the 5th frame, the Penguins once again were out-shot, and out-hit, but the Red Wings once again failed to score. The game dragged on into the third Overtime period, where Jiri Hudler was sent to the box for 4 minutes for accidentally clipping a Pen in the face. Though the Penguins had already failed to convert two OT powerplays, it didn’t take very long for Peter Sykora to send everybody home.

I sat in my living room as thousands of others did: Shocked. Devastated.

Now I’m not going to be pessimistic about this thing. I think Detroit will come out with lot’s of energy on Wednesday night, and the Penguins won’t have enough of whatever it was they had last night. So as much as I would have liked to see the Wings win a series at home, I’ll settle for Detroit in 6.

The Detroit Red Wings are aiming for their 4th Stanley Cup in 11 seasons. The Pittsburgh Penguins are trying for their 3rd in franchise history. The Pens go in with just 3 players who have previously lifted the cup. Detroit has 10, 2 of which being their starting and back-up goalies, Chris Osgood and Dominik Hasek respectively.

The Penguins will be led by 20-year-old captain Sidney Crosby, while Detroit will ride the experience of 38-year-old captain Niklas Lidstrom, who has one the cup with the Detroit Red Wings 3 times in 97, 98, and 02.

The average age of the Detroit Red Wings is a still-young 32.3. While the average age of the Pittsburgh Penguins is a much lower 27.9.

I believe this will be the biggest factor as the Red Wings win the cup in 5 games.