INSIDE HOCKEY

Why the Penguins Won: “Lord Stanley, scratch their names on your fabled Cup,” said Penguins Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Lange. After coming back from 2-0 and 3-2 holes in the Stanley Cup Final to win two consecutive games each time, the Pittsburgh Penguins etched their names into history Friday night at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena.

The odds were stacked against Pittsburgh going into Game Seven. Each of the first six games had been won by the home team, and it had been since 1971 that a visiting team won a Game Seven in the Final. But the Penguins shattered those odds by executing their puck-management game plan, staking a 2-0 lead by the midway point of the second with two goals from Red Wings killer Max Talbot, and getting a big-game performance from 24-year-old goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to shut down the Wings the rest of the way.

“When you score big goals through your career, it feels like it stays with you,” said Talbot, whose four goals in this series followed his Game Five heroics of last year, when he denied the Red Wings the opportunity to clinch the Cup at home by tying the game with just seconds remaining. “It might sound stupid, but hockey is a lot in the head. You start believing in it, and you just say to yourself that you’re that type of player. You want to be there in the big games.”

Not even a knee injury to captain Sidney Crosby about six minutes into the second period – he would return for only 32 seconds of the third after colliding awkwardly into the boards with Detroit’s Johan Franzen – could deter the Penguins from their destiny. Pittsburgh was strong on the forecheck and forced the Wings into 25 turnovers on the night, two of which resulted In Penguins goals. They came at the Wings hard, battled for loose pucks and endured a third period in which they managed only a single shot on goal by blocking shots, clearing the zone and getting a stellar contribution from Fleury to preserve the win.

“It was so painful, being a captain and seeing how intense it was, what the guys are doing out there blocking shots” while sitting on the bench, said Crosby. “But you get to a point where you’ve got to ask yourself whether you’re going to be hurting your team by being out there. I did everything I could to numb it, but I’m playing against [Pavel] Datsyuk and [Henrik] Zetterberg. One misstep and I could cost the guys a lot of hard work, so I had to sit and wait and watch. But we don’t get to this point without everyone contributing. I knew the guys were going to find a way to pull it off.”

Why the Red Wings Lost: Last year’s Stanley Cup champions competed right up until the end. They dominated on faceoffs, winning 70 percent to Pittsburgh’s 30, and got long periods of sustained pressure in the offensive zone. They outshot the Penguins 23-18 on the night and took the body to their opponent early, throwing 21 hits to Pittsburgh’s 12 in the first period. But the Penguins did a good job of controlling the play in the neutral zone, preventing the Wings from getting shots through to the net and forcing them into making wrong decisions with the puck.

“I think we got off to a decent start, and then the dreaded second period,” said Detroit winger Kirk Maltby. “Not that we played poorly, but two mistakes end up being two goals. Obviously, that’s the end of it there.”

The Wings came on with a big push in the third, cutting the Penguins’ lead to 2-1 with 6:07 remaining on a crisp defenseman-to-defenseman pass from captain Nick Lidstrom to Jonathan Ericsson, who one-timed it past Fleury on the glove side from about 60 feet out. With less than five minutes remaining, Pittsburgh had yet to get a single shot in the final frame, and the Wings were coming with a big push in an attempt to tie the game. But the Penguins sacrificed their bodies to hold them off, Fleury stood tall and, in the end, time simply ran out for Detroit.

“We had opportunities in the first and third period, but unfortunately when you’re down a couple of goals, the clock’s your enemy,” said Maltby. “We had a last-second opportunity there, and I’m not sure there’s any time left on the clock for an opportunity. So, no excuses. They worked their butts off as hard as we did. And tonight they just scored more than we did.”

Key Moment: If anyone still had doubts that Fleury could come through for his team with everything on the line, he emphatically erased them in Game Seven. He came up big throughout the game, but found another level to his game as the clock ticked down.

The Penguins backstop got some luck with about 2:10 remaining, when he went down to stop a Niklas Kronwall shot with his midsection and it bounced up, skipping over his right shoulder and off the post. Then he made two Cup-clinching saves in the game’s final four seconds, none bigger than with one second remaining, where he dove across the crease to rob Lidstrom.

“Me and Flower are pretty tight, and you want him to make the save,” said Talbot. “They played desperate; they were coming at us. They’re a great team. And we were able to stay with it and win the game.”

“I thought Fleury had his best two games in Games Six and Seven,” said Wings coach Mike Babcock. “You’ve got to give him credit.”

What’s Next: A year after winning the Stanley Cup on Pittsburgh’s home ice, the Wings watched the Penguins return the favor. Detroit has a mix of experienced veterans and young talent that should ensure the club remains among those to beat for years to come, but this postseason, injuries to key players and playing a lot of games in a relatively short span of time eventually caught up to the Wings as they fell just one win shy of defending their title.

“I thought we looked out of gas pretty much all series,” said Babcock. “I thought we competed, I thought we tried, but I never thought we got to the level we would have liked to. Our guys did a good job to battle through and do the best they could, but we just didn’t have enough to get it done.”

For the Penguins, next up is the parade – Pittsburgh’s second championship celebration in four months, as the NFL’s Steelers were Super Bowl champions early this year. Rookie coach Dan Bylsma, who joined a Penguins team in February that was on the outside of the playoff race looking in, has led his club to a championship. Evgeni Malkin, who led the postseason with 36 points, cemented his status as one of the best players in the world and won the Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP. And after being heralded as “The Next One” since he was a teenager, Crosby will have his name on the Stanley Cup at just 21 years old.

“It’s a dream come true; it’s everything you imagined and more,” said Crosby. “Everything it took to win, we did it. Blocking shots, great goaltending, different guys stepping up. We’ve been through a lot. Last year was pretty devastating, but we found a way to claw our way back and finally finish it off.”

“Every morning I like to wake up and say today’s the best day of my life. Well, today really is the best day of my life,” said Talbot. “Four years ago, this team was close to moving, and look what happened. Three years later, we’re in the Stanley Cup Final, and four years later we win that beautiful Cup.”