Gritty Talbot turns things around

Saturday, June 13, 2009
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/penguins/

DETROIT -- Ah, summertime in the City of Champions.

Your Pittsburgh Penguins, left for dead in the grim light of winter, widely discounted again as recently as the 1st of June when they trailed the Red Wings, 2-0, in this fabulous Stanley Cup final, are the NHL champions this morning after shocking Detroit last night in Game 7, 2-1.

DETROIT - JUNE 12: Maxime Talbot #25 of the Pittsburgh Penguins celebrates after scoring his second goal of the second period against the Detroit Red Wings skates by during Game Seven of the 2009 NHL Stanley Cup Finals at Joe Louis Arena on June 12, 2009 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

The Penguins thus join the Super Bowl champion Steelers in crushing the city's 2009 parade budget, and somewhere maybe Kobe Bryant is thankful Pittsburgh does not have an NBA team to ruin his dreams as well.

Max Talbot, the consistently resourceful forward and the modern torch- carrier for champion Penguins muck-grinding grinder-muckers in the grand working class tradition of Bob Errey, Phil Bourque, and Troy Loney, sandwiched two second-period goals around a knee injury to superstar Sidney Crosby to lead his team to its third Stanley Cup.

"It's the biggest day of my life," Talbot said on the Joe Louis Arena ice surface 20 minutes after the biggest game of his life. "I'm not really thinking I'm a hero; I scored two goals, but everybody on this team is a hero.

"I wasn't trying to do anything special. I just wanted to win the Cup. It was a special game. It's just crazy now."

With a career-high six postseason goals already on his resume at game time, Talbot went behind the Red Wings' cage in the second minute of that second period, hectored defenseman Brad Stuart into the right corner, and curled back toward the net as Evgeni Malkin tipped Stuart's terrible clearing attempt toward the slot.

Max brought Detroit goaltender Chris Osgood to his knees with a little fake, then reloaded and found the five hole to make it 1-0 Pittsburgh at 1:13 of the second period.

Minutes later, Detroit's Johan Franzen, the venerated "Mule," rammed Crosby into the halfboards, pinning his left knee and doubling 87 over in pain. Sid left like, well, like he'd been kicked by a mule, not to return until midway through the third period and then for but a single shift.

But the youngest captain to lift the Stanley Cup was fully capable of that joyous post-game ritual.

Also sandwiched between Talbot goals in the second period were two exquisite penalty-killing efforts by the Penguins, the first with Jordan Staal off for hooking and the second when Hal Gill was whistled for holding Pavel Datsyuk's stick. The most threatening shots of each Red Wings power play actually were fired by Penguins -- Malkin on the first, Craig Adams on the second.

"The way we played these last two games was pretty much textbook," said Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi, whose brilliant defense in the third period of Game 6 enabled this ultimate chapter. "I thought we played very disciplined, and tonight we did a fantastic job of keeping it simple because they are so disciplined; you're always in a kind of chess game with them.

"It's a tough thing sometimes, with all the offensive talent we have, that you really want to open it up. To play this disciplined in a game like this is a real accomplishment."

DETROIT - JUNE 12: Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury(notes) #29 of the Pittsburgh Penguins saves a shot on goal by the Detroit Red Wings during Game Seven of the 2009 NHL Stanley Cup Finals at Joe Louis Arena on June 12, 2009 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

It was a second lack of discipline by Stuart that sprung Talbot into the Detroit end two-on-one with Tyler Kennedy. Stuart gambled in the neutral zone, Talbot swooped onto a loose puck and fled toward Osgood. Not risking a crossing pass, he fired the puck over Osgood's far shoulder to make it 2-0 at 10:07 of the second.

What Talbot did in that period represented little less than a total inversion not only of the karma inside Joe Louis Arena, but an heroic redirection of perhaps the very future of the franchise.

What would have been worse, had the Penguins' championship dreams lay broken on the streets of Motown through another rotten summer, the weight or the wait?

The weight of having skated to within the shadow of the Stanley Cup in consecutive seasons and twice failing to grab it would have affixed itself to and defined the early careers of Crosby, Malkin, and Marc-Andre Fleury. The core of Pittsburgh's hockey evolution still likely would have had a magnificent future, but it would suddenly have had, just as assuredly, a potentially burdensome past.

The wait for the next Pittsburgh visit by the Stanley Cup would have gone to 18 years minimum, and every calendar subsequently trashed would have calcified the suspicion that for all their athletic gifts, the young Penguins stars were somehow not the right stuff.

Max Talbot changed all that, and Fleury guaranteed it.

"I don't have a good explanation for why [Talbot] comes up big in critical situations, in critical games," coach Dan Bylsma said. "He's gritty. He's determined. He's not afraid to get after it."

Game 7 was Talbot's second two-goal game in the final. The first two, opening and closing the scoring in Game 3, lifted the Penguins off the deck, just as his fight in Philadelphia triggered a five-goal blizzard that eliminated the Flyers.

"I said to Flower [Fleury]," Talbot said, "'Flower, I might have the game winner. Do it for me."

Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com.
First published on June 13, 2009 at 1:10 am