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Stanley Cup Finals: A look at the Detroit Red Wings

It should be a tremendous Stanley Cup Final between the Penguins and Red Wings.  Rightly so, the Red Wings are the favorites coming into the series.  They have the veteran playoff experience, highly skilled forwards, a deep defense and two steady goaltenders.

That said, I think the Penguins will show up anyway, just for the hell of it.

I’ve heard some pundits already talking about a Red Wings sweep.  That dog just don’t hunt in my view.  The Penguins are just too talented to get dominated in four straight games.  Moreover, there are several aspects of this matchup that favor the Penguins, and I’ll highlight those later in the week.

I’ll be truthful right off the bat, I don’t know the Wings inside and out like I do the Penguins, naturally, seeing them so little.  And vice versa, I’m sure that beyond Crosby and Malkin, many Red Wings fans don’t know the depth of the Penguins as well.

So with that, here’s a look at the key items concerning the Red Wings;

• The Penguins and Red Wings have played so few times in recent years that you can list the games individually.  Overall since the ‘00-’01 season, the Penguins are 2-5 against the Wings.  Here are the results;
  • Oct. 7th, 2006 - 2-0 Red Wings.
  • Dec. 12th, 2005 - 3-1 Red Wings.  Pens goal by Recchi.
  • Oct. 18th, 2003 - 4-3 Penguins.  How’s this, Pens goals by Ramzi Abid, Marty Straka (secondary assist by some dude named Lemieux) and two by Rico Fata. 
  • Mar. 18th, 2003 - 5-1 Red Wings.  Pens goal by Marty Straka.
  • Oct. 25th, 2002 - 7-3 Red Wings.  Pens goals by Alex Kovalev (2) and Ville Nieminen.
  • Mar. 2nd, 2002 - 4-2 Red Wings.  Pens goals by Jan Hrdina (a rarity) and Stephane Richer.
  • Dec. 10th, 2000 - 4-3 Penguins.  Pens goals by Kip Miller, Michal Rozsival, Marty Straka and Toby Petersen.
• Joe Louis Arena - The Wings have gotten some bad press lately concerning their hundreds of empty seats during these playoffs.  Of course, that won’t be a problem during the Finals, for a few reasons.  First, there are fewer tickets available, because of the freebies that are given out to the NHL, the press, other teams, etc.  Secondly, Wings fans simply have gotten so used to being in the playoffs that they’ll take the chance of waiting ’til the Finals to sellout their building.  Thirdly, Pens fans have already scooped up the majority of the available tickets for Games One and Two in Detroit.  In addition, you can’t compare the crowd in Detroit to either the New York or Philly crowd, it’s not even close.  I could be wrong, but I just don’t see home ice tilting so much to the Detroit side as some are portraying it to be.
• Forwards - The Wings have arguably the best 1-2 tandem in the league in Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.  Those two, along with rugged winger Tomas Holmstrom make for a daunting first line.  Datsyuk’s and Zetterberg’s 19 and 21 points, respectively, in the playoffs are right alongside Crosby and Malkin as the playoff scoring leaders.  The Penguins’ defense, underated throughout these playoffs, will have their hands full containing them.  However, as much as you must mention the accomplishments of the Wings’ first line during the playoffs, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the poor performance of the Wings’ second line of Valtteri Filppula, Dan Cleary and former Penguin Mikael Samuelsson (played 22 games for the Pens in ‘02-’03, part of the Fleury draft day trade of ‘03).  This second line virtually was shutout the entire Dallas series, only generating one goal (in Game One by Filppula) and three assists the entire series.  Of course, this line sorely misses Johan Franzen, who was absolutely on fire with 12 goals prior to his concussion-like symptoms which have kept him out of the lineup up to now. The Wings’ checking lines are full of gritty, rugged, seasoned veterans such as Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby and recent re-arrival Darren McCarty.  With such firepower at the top of the lineup, there hasn’t been much need for the bottom two lines to provide much offense, but they’ve gotten good scoring from fourth liner Jiri Hudler with 4 goals and 13 points so far.
• Defense - Like the Penguins, the Wings have a wealth of offensive defensemen, but the difference in the Wings is their D-men have been putting points up at a much higher clip than the Pens.  Leading the charge is perennial Norris Trophy winner Nicklas Lidstrom, while they certainly have excellent additional offensive D-men in former Devil Brian Rafalski and Niklas Kronvall.  On the defensive/defenseman side, they’ve got 72 year old Chris Chelios, or so it seems.  Gotta give the man props to keep at such a high level at his age.  Chelios did miss Game Six with a leg injury, but I’d be shocked if he was out for Game One with the Pens.  In addition, they have Brad Stuart, Andreas Lilja and Brett Lebda.
• Between the Pipes - Chris Osgood has taken over for Dominik Hasek since early on in their playoff run.  Osgood’s stats have been eerily similar to that of Marc-Andre Fleury.  Osgood’s GAA is at 1.60 compared to 1.70 for Fleury, while Osgood’s save pct. is at .931 compared to Fleury’s .938.  It would certainly be a valid assessment to suggest that if either of the two netminders stumble, their respective team could be in big trouble.
• Special Teams - This is the key to the series, in my view.  Both teams have near the top powerplays among playoff teams (24.6% for the Pens, 21.0% for the Wings), just as both teams have near the best penalty killing units among playoff teams (87.3% for both teams).  Something’s gonna have to give.  Could it be the scoring of the Wings’ defensemen ??  Could it be the Pens’ top powerplay unit of Crosby/Malkin/Hossa/Malone/Gonchar ??  We shall see.
• Faceoffs - I bring this up because everyone else is, although it hasn’t made a difference so far.  The Wings have the best faceoff percentage among playoff teams at 55.7%, while the Penguins have among the worst percentage at 46.7%.  The difference with the Wings is that because their offense is predicated so much on puck possession down low, winning faceoffs the majority of the time obviously makes it that much easier to retain possession of the puck.

Overall, like I said, this is going to be a great series.  I think everyone on the Western side of the house is kinda poo-poo’ing the Pens’ chances right now.  That’s cool, keep on doing that.

One guy’s prediction ??  Pens in six.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Opinion, Game Preview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.