Wings win the Stanley Cup

The Detroit Red Wings won the 2008 Stanley Cup. Henrik Zetterberg took home the Conn Smythe Trophy, and Niklas Lidstrom is the first European to have his name etched on the Cup as team captain. Some thoughts:

• There's an argument that the Conn Smythe should have gone to Sidney Crosby, who led the playoffs in scoring. You have to show up in the finals, though, to get the votes and Detroit effectively shut him down. The Penguins' best player was Marc-Andre Fleury, who kept his team in it despite being outshot in 17 of 20 full periods of hockey played.
  
• Speaking of Fleury, the Cup winning goal, which he pushed into the net with his butt, was the second wonky GWG the young netminder has given up in a championship game. You may recall when Fleury shot the puck off Braydon Coburn and back into the net at the 2004 World Junior Championship, giving Team USA the gold.
  
• Scary how close Pittsburgh came to tying it up in the dying seconds. The Red Wings completely dominated the Penguins for the majority of the series. They were embarrassingly out shot. They couldn't stop Detroit from carrying it over the blue line. And their top guns couldn't generate much against the Wings' scoring line (which admittedly features two Selke nominees). Yet it almost all came down to a deciding game 7.
  
• Despite talk that paints the Penguins as the second coming of the 1980's Oilers, Pittsburgh will not become a dynasty. They'll never be able to keep that team together under the salary cap. The new CBA has redefined the definition of a dynasty. It's no longer a core group of players that string together a number of Cup victories. The new dynasty is a team which drafts and develops talent well, fills its roster with character players that fit the team's philosophy, perennially earns a playoff berth, and wins the Cup every few years. Sound familiar? Yep, the Red Wings are the closest thing the NHL will see to a dynasty for a long time.
  
• The novelty of the man-between-the-benches TV coverage has worn off. There's only so many ice condition report you can take. And I'm pretty sure Michel Thierren appreciated Pierre Maguire's coaching tips. Maybe Maguire is bucking to make a return to behind the bench like fellow TV analyst Barry Melrose? I was secretly hoping he'd take a deflected puck off the kisser so we wouldn't be subjected to his know-it-all commentary anymore.

And so another hockey season ends.

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?

Bettman cooks Detroit's octupus

Commissioner Gary Bettman is determined to take all the fun out of the NHL. On the heals the Sean Avery Rule (no more waving your stick in front of the goalie's face), Zamboni drivers are no longer allowed to remove debris thrown on the ice or they'll be dinged for a $10K fine...or at least they're not allowed to twirl it. Depends on your interpretation.

While the new rule doesn't name the Detroit Red Wings specifically, the league isn't veiling the fact that this is in relation to Wings fans throwing octupi at the Joe Louis Arena. I guess it just took them 56 years to figure out it may be a problem.

NHL spokesman Frank Brown gave this explanation: "Because matter flies off the octopus and gets on the ice when he does it."

- Detroit Free Press

Hmm, that's a complete 180 from the league's recent stance on the sin.

As recently as last year's playoffs, the NHL tacitly endorsed [Zamboni driver Al] Sobotka's antics.

"Every so often, an octopus slips out of someone's hands, and Al is right there to take care of the matter," Brown told the New York Times last May. "And he cannot be blamed if, as it tries to break free from Al's grasp, the octopus lifts Al's arm and twirls itself in the air."

- The Detroit News

This is all a little bit deja vu for my fellow Seattle Thunderbirds (WHL) fans. If you're not familiar, that loud hippie in section 101 is Zamboni John. Before he took on the role of unofficial team cheerleader, he was the Zamboni driver at the old Mercer Arena. The city (who ran the arena) didn't take kindly to his high-fiving the audience while cutting the ice and his waving the large fish that T-Birds fans threw at every game versus longtime rival Portland Winter Hawks. "Zamboni John" Scannell is now a labor and employment attorney. Maybe Zamboni John can represent Sobotka should he defy Bettman's ruling.