The Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/
May 30, 3009
DETROIT
The first day Bill Guerin showed up in the Pittsburgh dressing room in March after being traded to the Penguins, he looked at the high-tech underwear Sidney Crosby wears under his equipment with extra shoulder padding and chuckled.
"Geez, my wife used to wear that kind of padding with her suits," he deadpanned.
From then on, Crosby was different, every day a little lighter and looser with Guerin riding him playfully.
Sidney Crosby(notes) speaks during a news conference in Detroit, Friday, May 29, 2009. Pittsburgh will meet the Detroit Red Wings in the NHL hockey Stanley Cup finals starting Saturday. (AP)The Penguins, in general, believe they are a different team, both from mid-February when (Disco) Dan Bylsma took over as head coach – they've lost only eight games since – and from last spring when they lost the Stanley Cup final to the Detroit Red Wings in six games.
"There will be no surprises this year," Crosby said yesterday. "We know our opponent."
Last year's final began with Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury tripping and falling onto the ice surface as he led his team out for Game 1 at Joe Louis Arena, perhaps a piece of foreshadowing that the young Penguins might not be quite ready.
This year, Fleury promises he'll make a more graceful entrance, and it is the veteran Red Wings who seem a little vulnerable heading into the series with an assortment of injuries to key players while facing five games in eight days.
"By the time we get to Pittsburgh for Game 3 (on Tuesday) we should be getting stronger," Detroit GM Ken Holland said yesterday. "We'll be gathering bodies as we go."
All-world blueliner Nicklas Lidstrom, out for the final two games of the Western Conference final against Chicago, is expected to play his 229th playoff match in Game 1 tonight, and impressive young defenceman Jonathan Ericsson should be back after undergoing an emergency appendectomy on Wednesday afternoon.
Both Pavel Datsyuk (foot bruise) and Kris Draper (groin), meanwhile, are unlikely to play, but should be back by Game 3.
"I want to play, not watch," said Datsyuk, who had three goals in two games against Pittsburgh during the regular season.
"Right now, it's a little hard to turn. But, especially in the playoffs, everybody plays in pain."
If Datsyuk can't play, the Wings will compensate again with members of their impressive depth chart like youngsters Darren Helm, Justin Abdelkader and Ville Leino.
"Well, when (Datsyuk) doesn't play, we have to have someone else hold on to the puck for 18 minutes of the game," laughed Detroit head coach Mike Babcock.
The Penguins deliver a decidedly different game under Bylsma, playing a more aggressive and physical game down low in the offensive zone.
"They don't try to score as many pretty goals now," said Detroit netminder Chris Osgood, who shut out the Pens in Games 1 and 2 last spring.
Bylsma, meanwhile, likes to dress 11 forwards and seven defencemen and give Crosby and Evgeni Malkin extra shifts on the fourth line.
"We're going to try to force them to deal with us, whether they're healthy or not healthy," said the 38-year-old Bylsma, a native of Grand Haven, Mich., and the author of four books with his father, Jay.
Yesterday's media sessions illustrated how quickly the hockey industry can change. Marian Hossa, the first player to switch sides in a Cup final rematch in 45 years, answered queries yesterday as a Red Wing a year after doing the same as a Penguin. Detroit backup goalie Ty Conklin is making his third trip to the final in four years, all with different teams. Barry Melrose, who began this season as head coach in Tampa Bay while Bylsma was beginning his first year as a head coach in the minors, sat at the back of the room yesterday working for ESPN while Bylsma sat at the podium beside Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero fielding questions.
The Pens believe they are different, more experienced and certainly hungrier, and seem sure they can dethrone the champions.
The Wings? Quietly confident, they just have to do again what they've done before.
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