This final could be the culmination of everything the Competition Committee thought up when it sought to better the game.

DETROIT -- Bill Guerin thought he was a hockey player. Then the New Jersey Devils drafted him, and he discovered he was part offensive tackle, part rodeo cowboy.

"We were the first team to really use the trap," Guerin recalled Friday, as the Penguins arrived in Detroit for a Stanley Cup final that was years in the making. "It was clutch and grab -- a war zone in front of the net and in the corners. The neutral zone? It was, get your lassos out and just hog-tie guys.

"We were pretty much penalized in yards back then. Holding, clipping..."

This spring we have seen the Penguins' seven-game track meet with the Washington Capitals, some of the finest, most high-skilled and fast-paced hockey perhaps ever played.

We were treated to the spectacle that was the young Chicago Blackhawks, running and gunning their way to a Western Conference final. The Cardiac 'Canes were never out of a game, because a team can't simply score two and shut 'er down the way they used to.

And now, in the Stanley Cup final, two teams with skills of the highest order.

Hockey as we have seen it this spring was the stated goal when the NHL revamped its rule book during the lockout of 2004-05. It has taken four years, but we are here now.

The game now gets better as the playoffs wear on. No longer does it devolve into the swallow-your-whistle, hook and ride hockey that this league gave its fans for so long.

"It was just a different game," Guerin said of his early years. "Now there's a lot of flow in the games and, I don't want to say more skills, but a more open game."

Skills that are allowed to come through, perhaps?

"Yeah -- you see skill, not just from the top two lines now. You see it from everybody."

And you see it from the goal crease. Or at least Chris Osgood does, as he contemplated likely six or seven games of the Penguins' Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin coming at him in waves.

"The game is at the best spot it's ever been, in the history of the game," Osgood said. "Right now, from what I see. With the skating, and the talent that is on the ice. The rules changes they've put into the game, we're now reaping the rewards of them. There is not so much clutching and grabbing, guys are able to go to the net. And I think the physicality of the game is still there."

"We don't need 6-5 games to be exciting. I watched those games between Pittsburgh and Washington -- they were great. End-to-end action, a lot of great players with skill. The NHL has to, not change a lot of rules, but just stick with what we have now."

It took a while for players to change old habits. There has to be some turnover, as older players moved out of the game, and those too slow for the new style became extinct.

Managers needed a few years to draft with an eye on skill. That mentality of drafting cookie-cutter, 6-foot-2, 215-pound players, just because, had to be altered.

And the new players who were being added to the mix have never been taught that tired, old mantra: "Get a stick on him in the neutral zone." Slowly, the ranks have filled with the young, while players who could change, like the 38-year-old Guerin, did so.

So perhaps this final marks that moment in hockey, like the jungle expedition that emerged from the trees to see that vast, forgotten temple.

Could this Stanley Cup final between Detroit and Pittsburgh be "The Series?" The culmination of everything that the Competition Committee had drawn up that barren winter, while Ted Saskin and Bill Daly were beating each other up over the Collective Bargaining Agreement?

Mark Messier thinks so.

"I think they've done a great job coming out of the lockout to really change the rules of the game to open it up and bring the entertainment factor back in our game," Messier said in a conference call Friday. "We really see the skill and the speed which were missing for a few years. The stars are really able to shine. They're really able to utilize their skills and separate themselves from a lot of the players.

"I just think as a fan watching the games, the games are exciting, they're fast-paced," he said. "It really bodes well for the future of the NHL, at least for the next 10, 20 years, for sure."

In the last pre-lockout final, Tampa beat Calgary in seven games. The team that scored the first goal won all seven games, in what history will remember hockey's final rodeo.

Watch this Detroit-Pittsburgh final, and tell me if you miss those days.