Wings beat Pens in game 1

It's the beginning of the end of the hockey season: the Stanley Cup Finals. Enjoy it while it lasts, because we all go golfing at the end of the series, waiting for our next kick at the Cup.

The Red Wings opened the Finals with a decisive 4-0 victory over the Penguins. This is the first loss in these playoffs for Pittsburgh where they didn't beat themselves. They simply don't yet have an answer for Detroit at even strength. They also couldn't solve Chris Osgood, "the worst goalie to win the Cup", who stopped the few dangerous chances the Penguins mustered.

The key to this series for the Wings will be to stay out of the box. They were lucky the Pens didn't strike first on any of their four first period power plays.
The key for Pittsburgh will be to draw penalties and get their goals on the power play. Sid the Kid has to know it after being shut down repeatedly, not just by Detroit's stingy defense but also by the Wings' scoring line of Datsuyk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom. Will we see Crosby return to his embellishing ways to get his team the man advantage?

Coming into this series the Penguins were the hottest team in the league. The questions remain: Are they better than the middling Eastern Conference teams they had to dispatch to reach the Stanley Cup Finals but no match for the West? Or are they the 1983 Oilers redux? (Not a bad thing to be truthfully.) Or is this a young team on a date with destiny, that merely tripped out of the gate much like Marc-Andre Fleury's entry onto the ice last night?