DETROIT – Maxime Talbot is from Lemoyne, Quebec, not Flin Flon, Manitoba, and Saturday’s game was played in Motown, not Moscow.

But Talbot nearly ventured into Bobby Clarke territory Saturday in Game 5 of this Stanley Cup final when, with the game irretrievably lost late in the second period, he laid the lumber to Pavel Datsyuk’s foot, a cheap shot that brings every Canadian back to Game 6 of the 1972 Summit Series.

"They (the Red Wings) can suggest whatever they want," said Talbot. "I went for the puck, and his foot was there."

In some fantasy world, Talbot must think that this Cup final is being played without the aid of television or replay. The puck wasn’t in Datsyuk’s feet at all, the pertinent fact being that Detroit’s leading scorer and MVP candidate had only that night returned from a foot injury.

It was classic hockey. Classic, if your idea of classic is cheap, dirty and chicken-bleep.

"I'm not going there," said Detroit coach Mike Babcock when asked about the incident. "The bottom line is they're doing what they can to win, and we're going to do what we can to win."

Which makes that uncharacteristic play by Talbot a sign that these Penguins aren’t sure, after being walloped 5-0 in Game 5, exactly what measures they need to take to get back on the winning side.

Detroit was good Saturday — very good.

Johan Franzen checked back into the series with his best game thus far. Datsyuk is back, and already very effective. Henrik Zetterberg looked fresh. The Red Wing power play was Red Army good.

"They all played well," Sidney Crosby said of the Red Wings. "(Datsyuk) looked good out there, made a play on the first goal. We just made mistakes, so it doesn’t matter who’s out there."

The mistake they made was giving the Detroit power play the keys to the car. Especially after the Red Wings threw the puck around on their first, scoreless man advantage, the way a chef sharpens his carving knife before the feast.

The next power play, provided by a Sergei Gonchar slash, produced Niklas Kronwall’s 3-0 goal. The next power play — an undisciplined Evgeni Malkin elbow — ended when Brian Rafalski sifted a wrist shot through a patented Tomas Holmstrom screen.

The next penalty, a foolish Chris Kunitz roughing on Darren Helm, resulted in a Henrik Zetterberg goal that made the score 5-0.

"The second period we started to get undisciplined. Unfortunately for us our PK couldn’t come up with that first one, a bit of an unlucky bounce off my stick," said defenceman Rob Scuderi. "From there we kept being undisciplined and really didn’t give ourselves a chance to come back.

"I think we were so wound up in trying to do other stuff besides playing our game, we never gave ourselves a chance to come back. We were too revved, and I don’t know what we were trying to do. That’s not the way we play and that’s not the way we’ve played this series."

Talbot was as frustrated as the rest of his teammates.

"I can’t say a lot of guys played well tonight for our team," he said. "We’ll just have to regroup, and come back and have a great performance like we did in Game 3.

"The good thing is, they have (only) one win tonight," he added, pulling his chin up. "It’s 3-2. If you would have told me at the start of the year that we’d be down 3-2 in the Stanley Cup final, going back home, I’d take that any time."