...and all God's children said CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

GAME SIX RECAP (Penguins 2, Red Wings 1)

Yeah, so it's tied at three, but so what? You think a team with the veteran composure of the Detroit Red Wings is going to pass up an opportunity to win the Cup at home? With all of that experience and skill, and given how unglued the Penguins came the last time they played there, I'm not sure how anybody could think this game could be close. And Marc-Andre Fleury, setting aside the anomalous Game Five from 2008, has tripped and been beaten early and often whenever he's been inside Joe Louis Arena.

reverse jinximus, reverse jinxistis, reverse jinxerunt

PLEASE HELP US

GAME FIVE RECAP (Red Wings 5, Penguins 0)

Not gonna go and look for an action shot from Game Five, as presumably all of them involve the Flower fishing a puck out of his net. The MAFer looked baaaaaad on goals 1-4. By the time he was pulled after goal 5, I was watching a movie. Yeah, I know he was hung out to dry on at least one sloppy and slow line change and the deficit was aggravated by some unnecessary penalties that bespoke a lack of composure running up and down the roster. Still, though, those nagging doubts in some corners about Fleury's ultimate capability to lead a team to a championship aren't going away-- ever-- until he, y'know, wins a championship.

Am I one of the doubters? I don't want to be. I really don't want to be. On a strangely parallel train to Saturday's Game Five, we Fleury apologists always point first to Game Five of last year's finals, when #29 turned aside fifty-five (55!) Red Wing shots to win a triple-overtime game with a Finals loss on the line. This was his shining moment of last year, I thought, so why not a rerun in a series full of them? When he's on, he makes it look so effortless. But he wasn't on Saturday, and now he's still got to win one at the Joe if this year is going to end well.

Here's another 2008 Game Five echo: that marathon was ended by Petr Sykora, who called his (wrist) shot and then delivered. He's still on the Penguins' roster, but I haven't the slightest idea whether he was in the building on Saturday, or whether he's traveled with the team at all since his benching. I have thought a couple of times about whether he'd hoist the Cup in street clothes if the occasion presented itself, or whether he'd blow it off. There's no way to know, and it may not matter anyway, but I can tell you that I thought of Sykora specifically during the first half of the first period of this year's Game Five. Before he lost his cool and started elbowing everything wearing red, Evgeni Malkin was on fire. He'd retained Best Player on the Ice status, the puck was sticking to him and he was flying. He didn't get the wing support he needed in burying the scoring chances he was generating. Nobody's going to fault Ruslan Fedotenko's efforts this spring, but it was hard not to see Mad Max out there and not think back to Malkin's jesting comments about him having "a little bit bad hands." Sykora earned his scratching honestly, and maybe his hands aren't any better now than Talbot's, but we're always going to wonder, right?

And so, in the absence of an action pic, I'll instead accompany these disappointed words with a shot of the regional cover of Sports Illustrated that showed up in Michigan and Canadian mailboxes last week. It went to press when the series was 2-0 Detroit, and hit newsstands when the series was knotted at two. I'd like to think it had Dewey Defeats Truman potential, but perhaps it was just stating the inevitable.

There's really no way the Penguins can win the series now, given Datsyuk's return and the collective confidence they gained from Saturday night's demolition. I cannot believe that for the second year in a row my home arena will be the situs where the world's greatest sport trophy is awarded, and my favorite team won't be winning it. Again.

Reverse-jinxing
Is the thing to do
When nothing else is
Available to you

GAME FOUR RECAP (Penguins 4, Red Wings 2)

Well, now there's something different from last year. After four games last year, the Penguins were down 3-1; this year it's knotted up at 2. It's premature to draw anything out of that, given that if the Penguins lose tonight, they'll be at the same place they were last year-- down 3-2 and returning home.

But if the fans and the media are getting ahead of themselves a little after Game Four's win, it's difficult to blame them, because the team really does seem different from last year to this. Malkin's dominant play is obviously the biggest part, but the teamwide commitment to forcing the Wings to make mistakes is nearly as important.

I wrote after Game Three that the Penguins needed to get a goal out of the Staal-Kennedy-Cooke line at least once every three games. I hadn't really looked at their stats, but prior to Game Four, the Penguins' twenty-first goal in the playoffs, their aggregate was six goals-- three for Kennedy, two for Staal and one for Cooke. So they were due.

Staal's second-period tying goal didn't come with his linemates, though, but it was way, way better. Staal took a lead pass from Max Talbot while the Penguins were killing a second consecutive minor penalty, went straight up the ice and fought off Brian Rafalski long enough to get off a wrist shot that beat Chris Osgood. Some goals are worth more than a single point, short-handed goals chief among them.


The goal that made the remainder of the game a little less nail-biting was the prettiest one scored thus far in the playoffs, and The Incredible Malk wasn't even on the ice. Typically, highlight reel goals celebrate great individual efforts, but if the Red Wing Machine has taught us anything, it's that hockey is a team game. And the Penguins' fourth goal, youtubed herein, was the best team goal scored this postseason. Whether through an incomplete line change or a hunch by Dan Bylsma, Tyler Kennedy got part of a shift with Sid Crosby and Chris Kunitz. Kunitz can't bury anything these days, but he's become the Adam Oates of the postseason. Henrik Zetterberg and Nicklas Lidstrom have earned their reputations for shutting down the opposition's offense, but they'd either been out too long or they weren't ready for the Penguins' inventiveness. Kennedy harrassed Zetterberg into giving up the puck near the left point in his own zone, then passed the puck to Kunitz and went straight for the corner of the net. Kunitz sent the pass across the ice to the top of the right circle, where Crosby was skating in. Crosby took the pass and one-timed it across the slot again to where Kennedy was parked, and he one-timed it into the empty net.

Beautiful, beautiful goal. But it's only 2-2.

GAME THREE RECAP (Penguins 4, Red Wings 2)

Really, here's the best and truest compliment anyone could give the Red Wings: the Penguins had six skaters in the offensive zone for twenty-one seconds during Game Three, and not only didn't the Penguins score, but nobody noticed. The post-game buzz was that the crowd of 17,000 partisans kept quiet in complicity. I think that's unlikely. I think the Red Wings, with five skaters, are just so positionally sound in the defensive zone that they can simultaneously cover down low, the slot and the circles and make six opposing skaters look like five.

But if you can get the Wings to four skaters, it's a different story, and it has been all playoffs long. They're not great on the penalty kill. Whether it's just gap breakdown or the loss of Kris Draper or the hobbling of Pavel Datsyuk, I don't know, but last night they spent ninety short-handed seconds in their own zone without clearing the puck a single time, and the end result was Sergei Gonchar's game-winning goal. The Wings missed a few clearing opportunities and lost a few battles for the puck, which are uncharacteristic for them. At the same time the Wings have been slumping while short-handed, the Penguins' power play might finally be rounding into shape after months and months of underachievement. It might not matter much if Games Four to the end of the series are whistle-swallowers, but if we see more than three power-play opportunities for the Penguins from here on out, it could well be the difference in the series. We know the achilles heel for both teams: the Penguins can't afford to ice the puck late in shifts, and the Wings can't afford to be short-handed.

I really hope that someday I'll get to see Max Talbot lift the Stanley Cup. Sooner rather than later, yes. It's just tough to imagine anyone enjoying it more than he would. Talbot's such a great team guy, and it's no secret that he makes the team go in ways that nobody else can. He's got six goals in the playoffs, which is a modest sum, but his fingerprints are all over the team's playoff success, starting with his kick-start to the team in Game Six of the Philly series, continuing with his fluttering backbreaker goal against Carolina in Game Four and into last night's two-goal performace. Talbot was already a dirty word in Detroit after last year's tying goal in Game Five with 33.5 seconds to go, which led to a Stanley Cup celebration being taken away from the home crowd at Joe Louis Arena, and he's leaving his mark on this series. The Penguins have a personnel problem; they're too deep at center and too shallow at wing. Talbot's very good at everything-- very good speed, shot, defense, forecheck and penalty-kill-- but he's probably not superlatively great at anything. He's too good and valuable to be getting the scraps of fourth-line ice time, though, so when it became clear that Petr Sykora wasn't going to snap out his slump, Talbot's been consistently skating right wing on Malkin's line. He's not enough of a natural finisher to play there in an ideal hockey universe. Through the first twenty playoff games, he's left a couple of goals on the ice rather than in the net, though that statement applies to at least half the Penguins in the Finals. I know the Penguins are getting a lot of intangibles out of Chris Kunitz and the Staal-Kennedy-Cooke line, but they need to generate some tangibles, too. Figuring that Crosby would draw heavy Zetterberg/Lidstrom duty and the Malkin line would draw the remainder of the Lidstrom minutes and the Hossa/Fillipula or Datsyuk line, I thought the third line might be freed up to make a difference on the scoresheet. Yes, nobody gets to put on the winged wheel unless they've got playoff-tested defensive bona fides, but the Penguins' third line ought to be getting a goal every third game, at the least. It's not too much to ask, and it will absolutely be the difference between another early summer disappointment and a Stanley Cup parade down Boulevard of the Allies.

Through Game Three, this Final is just like last year's in terms of game outcomes and locales. One crucial difference is that in 2008's Game Three Sidney Crosby willed the team to a win by scoring two goals. He hasn't done that yet, and while he may not have a dominant game like that this year, the law of averages suggests he will. With Malkin consistently contributing in ways that he didn't until it was too late in last year's Final, the Penguins are just a bounce or two behind the Wings this year. That still means they're a bounce or two behind, though. Still, though, how do you make adjustments when the game results have been so counterintuitive? The Wings are rarely outshot. The Penguins outshot them in Games One and Two and lost each of those by two goals, then were badly outshot by the Wings in Game Three and didn't show up for the second period, and yet won. The Penguins have scored first in two of the games, but won only one of them. One difference last night was that the game was tied going into the third. Here's one point of consistency: if the Wings are ahead going into the third, you will not overcome that deficit.

"Oh, yeah? Just watch me," said Max Talbot a year ago yesterday.

GAME TWO RECAP (Red Wings 3, Penguins 1)

Yesterday I wrote that I couldn't quantify how many goals had been created by no-substitution icing. That was an error. The number is two. Detroit's second goal in Game One and their first goal in Game Two. Indeed, so much of Game Two was exactly like Game One--- the score, the backbreaking third goal by a minor league call-up whose name I still can't write without looking up, the Penguins controlling play for large stretches and outshooting the Wings and Chris Osgood coming up big where Marc-Andre Fleury is merely mortal. What was different? The Penguins jumping out to a lead, of course. And when it was still 1-0, Max Talbot threw a puck into the slot from behind the net, where Evgeni Malkin one-timed it right into some combination of Osgood's catching glove and the post, after which it skittered away harmlessly.

You've got to hand it to the Wings. They're less a hockey team than a golf swing.

May, 2009 Film Viewings

5.1 Tokyo-Ga (Wenders, 1985)
5.19 Sunnyside (Chaplin, 1919)

This was not a particularly strong month for film viewing.