DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
http://www.freep.com/section/SPORTS
June 3, 2009
They say a series doesn’t start until someone wins on the road. But had the Red Wings won Game 3 on the road Tuesday night, this series would have been over.
Instead, it just began. And the Wings have discovered an enemy they may fear more than Sidney Crosby on a breakaway.
It’s called the whistle.
PITTSBURGH - JUNE 02: Maxime Talbot #25 of the Pittsburgh Penguins handles the puck against Henrik Zetterberg(notes) #40 during Game Three of the 2009 NHL Stanley Cup Finals on June 2, 2009 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)If the Wings can’t kill penalties, they won’t kill Pittsburgh easily. And on a night when the officials missed a glaring penalty that should have been called — six men on the ice for the Penguins, not for a second, not for five seconds, but for nearly half a minute! — they didn’t miss a chance for a few ticky-tacky interference calls.
And they might as well have thrown a block of Kryptonite in front of the heretofore Superman Red Wings.
“It was a power-play game,” coach Mike Babcock said over the Versus broadcast after the loss. “They got three and we got two.”
Yeah. But they scored twice on theirs. The Wings could not get the dang thing out of their zone. They lost face-offs. They failed on clearing pass attempts. They coughed it up. They kept alive an Achilles’ heel performance in the one — and only — part of their game that is weak.
And now we have a series.
The moment of truth
The killer was the goal surrendered late in the first period, the one that tied the game at 2.
Until that moment, Pittsburgh was psychologically vulnerable. The Penguins can say what they want about confidence, experience, this year versus last year and all that jazz. The Pens took the ice Tuesday like a herd of elephants chasing a single pool of drinking water. They thundered through the Wings. They scored within the first six minutes, and you almost felt as if they would do it every six minutes for the rest of the night.
And then Henrik Zetterberg stopped it all.
The guy who spends more time chasing Crosby than screaming teenage girls got in perfect position for a rebound and fired the puck past Marc-Andre Fleury, just a minute and a half after the Pittsburgh goal.
That changed things. The elephants slowed their charge. And when Johan Franzen took a Zetterberg pass off a Pittsburgh defender’s stick and fired it in, the elephants came to a screeching halt.
The series — and, truly, the Stanley Cup itself — was within grasp.
Had Detroit been able to protect that lead, or better still, pad it with a penalty they were owed for the six-men infraction, the Penguins would not have recovered. Too much Pittsburgh adrenaline would have been spent just to find themselves down by the same 3-1 score as the last two games.
But instead, the dreaded new enemy — the whistle — did the Wings in. A needless penalty by Dan Cleary at 14:46 put the Wings on the man-disadvantage, and they have been awfully vulnerable there. They couldn’t get the puck out of their zone. Not once. Not a single flick down the ice. Not a single ricochet to center ice to force a reset. Nothing.
And when you can’t get the puck out of your zone, you can’t keep it out of your net forever. Nicklas Lidstrom, of all people, gave the puck up from the back boards. Franzen, of all people, fell down trying to secure it. Kris Letang, of all people, fired the fateful shot. And Chris Osgood, of all people, surrendered his softest goal of these Stanley Cup finals.
The Penguins were off the operating table.
And back to operating.
Two periods later, the whistle blew again. And during a power play that redefined the word one-sided — “they had us hemmed in for I don’t know how long,” Babcock told the media — Sergei Gonchar finally woke up and put one past Osgood.
PITTSBURGH - JUNE 02: Niklas Kronwall(notes) #55 of the Detroit Red Wings draws contact against Sergei Gonchar(notes) #55 of the Pittsburgh Penguins during Game Three of the 2009 NHL Stanley Cup Finals on June 2, 2009 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)Life without Datsyuk
“This is a great feeling,” Maxime Talbot told the Versus cameras after the 4-2 victory, in which he had two goals — the first and the last, an empty-netter. The “great feeling” he referenced wasn’t just wining. It was being alive in this series. The Penguins very easily could have taken a step backward from last year. Going down 3-0 would have been a depression that would have sunk them.
Instead, this victory reminds them that only last month, they climbed out of an 0-2 hole and defeated Washington in a seventh game. Don’t think they don’t envision a repeat.
Remember, Crosby has yet to get going. And Pavel Datsyuk looks as if he’s not going to play again. Fleury saved 10 more shots than Osgood on Tuesday night, and allowed one fewer goal. The Wings don’t need Fleury to get confident.
What they do need is to find a penalty kill. It’s maddening that a team as good defensively as the Red Wings can’t stop teams this postseason during the 5-on-4. Killing penalties was once a specialty. But without Datsyuk, and with a less than perfect Lidstrom (who looks as if he’s still hurting) the burden falls too heavily on Zetterberg, who is already exhausted chasing Peter Pan all night.
Yes. Sure. The Wings are allowed to be less than perfect. And historically, Game 3 at home is when a team on the ropes most comes alive.
But Detroit had a chance to end this thing before a young Pittsburgh team realized how far its nimble fresh legs might take it.
The Pens realize it now. And the Wings have a fight on their hands.
With the opponent — and with the whistle.
Contact MITCH ALBOM: 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com. Catch “The Mitch Albom Show” 5-7 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch “Monday Sports Albom” 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR. To read his recent columns, go to www.freep.com/mitch.
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