Hockey players, like all athletes, often visualize success. Quite often you will hear them say the goal was so real, so close, they could see it.

PITTSBURGH -- Hockey players, like all athletes, often visualize success. Quite often you will hear them say the goal was so real, so close, they could see it.

Usually that's an imagined vision. In the case of the Detroit Red Wings Monday night it was literally true. The Cup wasn't just in the Joe Louis Arena, it was out of the case, it was being wheeled to the Zamboni entrance, the keeper was on hand complete with white gloves and a tube of silver polish. The commissioner had made his way down to the ice.

Yet with 35 seconds left in the game it disappeared faster than Boots Del Biaggio.

If you think Tiger Woods' comment that people "don't watch hockey anymore" stung the NHL, imagine how the Red Wings felt when they saw the object of their desire up against the glass and then whisked away.

That's what Detroit coach Mike Babcock has had to deal with in the hours between seeing the Cup disappear in Detroit and trying to get his team focused on making it reappear -- this time on the ice -- in the Mellon Arena.

Changing players doesn't matter much now. It's certainly too late to be changing schemes. What it comes down to now is finding a way to reenergize his team. Physically it will be hard - they clearly were drained from the three-overtime effort Monday night - but mentally it would seem almost impossible.

Up by a goal with 35 seconds to play and you see it all slip away. Worse, you have to play almost another complete game before you lose it outright.

Babcock has chosen to try to lessen the disappointment by emphasizing the positives over the negatives.

"We are going to do what we always do," Babcock said. "The biggest thing is clearing your mind, remembering that the only people that can help you are the people in the room ... If we can create normalcy, I think we win."

That's true, but there is no easy way of doing that. It's not normal to be 35 seconds away from a championship and lose it hours later. Go wide right on a Super Bowl kick with that kind of time left and it's over, no chance, done, finished, walk away and so be it.

Give up the lead with 35 seconds left and then play on until near 1 a.m. and then lose, well that's harder. Detroit is, collectively, older and a bit smaller than the Penguins. It has been the goal of Pittsburgh to get the series to go deep with the idea that the younger, bigger Pens could perhaps wear down the Wings, but that was in the physical arena. In terms of being mentally strong, well NHL history shows us that teams that lose that marathon game tend to not do well afterward. Teams that win it get a tremendous bounce.

Getting the bounce and the next game at home would seem to play to the Penguins' advantage.

In the initial moments after that Game 5 loss, Babcock wrote the loss up to bounces and breaks, noting that the puck jumped over a stick: "We had the puck at the red line with one minute left; (it) bounced over one of our sticks. We had the puck in our own zone with 35, 38 seconds, whatever it was, we didn't execute in that situation. That's part of the game. They had a 5-on-3 in the last game (Game 4) and we came away with the win."

Nice thoughts, stuff happens, but the thoughts Babcock has to get out of his players collective heads is that they may have played their best game of the series and they still didn't win. That they have to do it all over again and they have to do it better and in the opponent's rink. That's not an easy thing to come to grips with no matter how good you are, no matter how many veterans are in your ranks. The thought that maybe, just maybe, the dream isn't going to happen, can take a team down.

That's where Babcock has to do his best work. He needs to show his players that they weren't that good in the first period and that they did things they normally don't do and that if they can fix those things they have an advantage.

He also needs to show tape of the many times the Red Wings inadvertently get their sticks up and get called for it and tell them to stop doing that. He needs to influence them on the finer points of crease crashing and how the tactic now works against them much the same as diving for penalties works against Sidney Crosby.

Recognize it, deal with and fix it.

This may sound surprising, but he also needs to reinforce in his players' minds that playing for the Cup tonight in Pittsburgh is actually an advantage.

There are few cities in the NHL that have quite the sense of "entourage" that the Red Wings do. In Joe Louis, the areas generally off limits to the public are filled with family, friends, business acquaintances and hangers-on. It's at a level I haven't seen since Bruce McNall owned and Wayne Gretzky played for the Los Angeles Kings.

There's nothing wrong with a good party, especially a good victory party, but the party in Detroit started long before the game, what with the taking care of all the people who "needed" to be taken care of and the fact that the friends and family groups were celebrating the Cup even before the first period was underway.

Babcock seemed to recognize that after the fact when he made a point of saying: "Let's get all the family stuff we need to do finished tonight and get ready to play tomorrow (in Game 6). I think being on the road is a great thing. We've closed out all our series on the road. As far as carry-over from that, it's a lesson learned."

A proper analysis of these Red Wings would indicate they are the better team, the deeper team, the more experienced team and the better coached team.

It's time for them to prove it and Babcock will have to play his part.

He's on record as saying he's over the loss on Monday and that his focus is on winning the game tonight.

Of that there is no doubt. What he needs to do, however, is get his team to think and act the same way.

It's the only way they'll see the Cup out of the hallway and in their hands.