The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

For the Pittsburgh Penguins, this journey began on a Saturday, Oct. 4 at 2:30 in the afternoon. At least back in home in the Eastern time zone. But they were, instead, playing the Ottawa Senators at 8:30 p.m. Stockholm time, 4100 miles from home.

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“It was a really tough decision for me to make. When I compared the two teams, I felt like I would have a little better of a chance to win the Cup in Detroit.” - Marian Hossa, July 2, 2008.

Regardless of whether or not the Red Wings beat the Penguins later tonight, Hossa was pretty much wrong. If Detroit pulls out the victory on its home ice, Hossa will happily lift the Cup, but that won’t have made him any more correct that Detroit gave him “a little better of a chance.”

Hossa, though you might not know it from his play in this series (0-3-3, plus-1) or indeed the whole playoffs (6-9-15, plus-6 in 22 games), is a game-changing player. That he took the smaller paycheck to have a better shot at the Cup might seem like some sort of magnanimous “I’m not in it for the money” type gesture, and certainly I don’t begrudge him that. It’s just kind of a dick move.

But that’s old news, obviously. So here we are more than 11 months later, and it all comes down to one game between the one he chose and the one he snubbed to see which team wins the Cup. All things considered, it’s more or less a 50-50 chance that everything works out in what he’d consider to be his favor.

But what this point ignores is that the Red Wings now have just as good of a shot of winning the grandest prize in all athletic competition as do the Penguins, and that’s with the whole “We have Marian Hossa on our team” affect. WITH Hossa, the Red Wings were more or less a dominant force, even when saddled with some of the worst goaltending in the NHL for the entirety of the regular season. WITH Hossa, the Red Wings rolled through Columbus in four games, struggled to down Anaheim in seven, dispatched Chicago in five and now stand on the brink against Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, WITHOUT Hossa, the Penguins struggled mightily before they dumped Michel Therrien. And without Hossa, they became inarguably the best team in the NHL under Dan Bylsma (I mean, they’ve lost 10 games in regulation since Bylsma took over on Feb. 16). And without Hossa, they snuck by Philadelphia in six games, struggled to down Washington in seven, dispatched Carolina in four and now stand on the brink against Detroit.

Clearly, Pittsburgh and Detroit are two very even teams, but imagine where the former would be if it were plus-Hossa and where the latter would be if it were minus-Hossa. Pretty easy to imagine that Pittsburgh would have been a better team if Hossa, who scored 40 goals this year, was the one getting one-timer feeds from Crosby or Malkin instead of, say, Petr Sykora (25), Ruslan Fedotenko (16) or Miroslav Satan (17).

Obviously there are some mitigating factors here: Might the Pens have fired Therrien had their record been slightly better? Might they have had the cap room to trade for Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin? Might they never have discovered the power of a barbecue pork burrito? Tough to say, obviously. But Marian Hossa makes Pittsburgh, like any other team he happens to be on, better, and conversely a Hossaless Detroit worse.

A better Penguins team would have beaten a worse Detroit and Hossa would have already lifted the Cup by now. Just sayin’.

The Lead

Chris Osgood could learn something from Rob Scuderi: don’t let the rebounds get too far in front of you.

While the former gave up the game’s first goal because he let Jordan Staal’s shot on a 2-on-1 get pretty well near the faceoff dot (plenty of room for Staal to corral the rebound and put it past him to draw first blood), Scuderi went into a butterfly nice enough to make Patrick Roy smile and stopped not one, not two, but three extra-attacker shots from Johan Franzen before Marc-Andre Fleury finally covered the puck. Detroit fans better hope Ozzie was taking notes from the bench. Stick save, kick save (and a beauty!), toe save.

And here’s how you know Rob Scuderi had a good game beyond that: he was credited with a hit and four blocked shots tonight. And, despite making those three actual saves on Franzen, was credited with just one inside of a minute to go. Translation: he stopped at least six shots from getting to the net. And in a 2-1, back-against-the-wall Game 6 victory after his team got curbstomped on Saturday, that’s pretty goddamn good.

But even beyond Scuderi’s third-period contribution (he and D partner Hal Gill, who blocked two shots of his own, were seemingly omnipresent for the final 15 minutes or so), the Pens also got a massive, massive game from Brooks Orpik, Scuderi’s old runnin’ buddy at Boston College, where they played three years together and won a national title in 2001.

Orpik, who apparently is never one to be outdone by an old college buddy, only turned in six blocked shots and four hits. It wasn’t exactly the Free Candy game (seven hits, four blocked shots, and yeah, I looked it up) all over again, but it was close enough.

And together, the former Eagles positively silenced the two guys that had given them hell during Game 5 in Detroit: Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk. The prior game, you’ll recall, saw the two European superstars combine for a goal and three assists, a plus-3 rating, and eight shots. It was a resoundingly loud performance from a pair that seemed intent on closing the series out as soon as possible. But in this game, where three of the four defensemen charged with silencing the Red Wings’ best players were Americans (damn you, Gonchar!), the Swede and the Ruskie were nearly whisper quiet, combining for no points, a minus-2 and six shots.

But that was the difference between Game 5 and tonight: the Penguins got back to what good Canadian — well, North American — boys do: take the game to the boards and just beat the hell out of their opponents. Don Cherry (or his American equivalent (George W Bush?)) would be so, so proud. The Penguins ruled the dashers with an iron fist and in fact board control led directly to the game-winning goal by Tyler Kennedy.

It was interesting, too, that while the Sid Crosbys and Evgeni Malkins tried to play the game through open ice, much like Zetterberg and Datsyuk, they, too, were rendered largely ineffective in their own right. Dan Bylsma, undoubtedly playing with the benefit of being up a goal for close to 39 minutes, saw this and was able to adjust. He leaned heavily upon the role players in the third period and, to his credit, the plan worked.

In all, the Pens blocked 20 shots and doled out 35 hits. There’s going to be a lot of black-and-blues at the morning skate tomorrow, but they’re fine with it, I’m sure. Because at least there is a tomorrow.

The Lead

Evgeni Malkin caught a lot of crap around this time last year for his subpar performance in the playoffs. He scored 18 points in his first nine playoff games, but only four in the last 11 and everyone was all, “WHERE’S GENO!?”

This year, you could have said that for maybe six or seven games from the last few against the Flyers (he had seven points in the first three games against Philly and only two in the remaining three) to the first or four against Washington (a so-so 1-2-3 in three and a minus-3). And since then, it’s been really, really bad to be a goalie playing against the Penguins.

Here, now, is a list of things at which, it suddenly occurs to me, Evgeni Malkin is fairly good:

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