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