All joking aside from Evgeni Malkin, Maxime Talbot scored big in Game 7.
DETROIT – The funniest moment of this Stanley Cup final came from the most unlikely source, Conn Smythe winner and struggling bilingualist Evgeni Malkin.
His English is poor. His attendance in front of the media, poorer.
But on the day between Games 3 and 4 he sat the podium next to his linemate Maxime Talbot, describing Talbot’s overall game for the media.
"First, I'm see how play Max. It's lots of emotion. It's never stop in skate," Malkin began. "Yeah, little bit bad hands.
"He has lot of scoring chance. Not score," Malkin said that day, purely in jest. "It's okay, he learns over the summer."
Talbot, it appears, was a fast learner.
The bearded Quebecois, one of those heart-and-soul, contributory scorers that every championship team seems to have, scored both Pittsburgh goals in a 2-1 win on Friday night. In a city known for its gunplay, Talbot was the purest shooter in an arena that held Sidney Crosby, Malkin, and as Detroit’s Kirk Maltby had said only a day before, "half of the Swedish Olympic team" that won gold in Turin.
And those hands?
"Hey, I still have bad hands," he laughed. "These two goals don't improve my stick handling skills. Like Geno said, I still have to work on it during the summer."
This Game 7 was the perfect example of a ‘team’ victory. Great goaltending, fantastic defensive play, enough bruises from blocked shots to fill a farm truck, and two goals from the guy who happened to have two of the best chances. He wasn’t great — he just managed not to waste either one.
"I don't really care about the two goals," he said. "Everybody's talking to me about that. I'm here because of that. But we won the game. Flower [Marc-Andre Fleury] made some great saves. Geno won the Conn Smythe. Everybody sacrificed their body. Miroslav [Satan] goes on the ice and blocks a shot. This is how you win championships."
The Penguins join the ’45 Maple Leafs and the ’71 Canadiens as only the third team to win a Game 7 on the road in the Stanley Cup final. They join the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers as the second Steeltown crew to bring a title home in 2009. And they become the first team since the ’79 Pittsburgh Pirates to win a major North American championship in Game 7 on the road.
"We talk about how young our team is, but they’ve played a lot of hockey, and have a lot of character," said head coach Dan Bylsma. "Their faces are young, but they’re just old enough and experienced enough to know what it takes."
They knew by pure instinct — without ever having to speak about it — what had to be done when their captain Sidney Crosby went down in the second period.
"We didn't talk too much about it," Talbot said. "But I knew what everybody thought was we have to win that for him. You know, he's been our leader. You just try to follow him the way he played through the playoffs."
Grey-beard Bill Guerin won a Cup for the first time in 14 years, back when he was a young pup with his first organization, the New Jersey Devils.
Does it feel the same when you lift it?
"It’s been such a long time, I don’t quite remember," Guerin said. "But it sure feels good. Honestly, I looked up at the clock, there were six seconds left, I just couldn’t believe it was really going to happen."
The game was salvaged with six-time Norris Trophy winner Nicklas Lidstrom, bearing down on a rebound goal he has scored tens of times in his illustrious career. A shot from Henrik Zetterberg, a rebound to the open side, a pinching No. 5 in red…
Then, somehow, with less than two seconds left on the clock, Fleury lunges across and thrusts his upper body in front of the puck. He looked like a secret service guy taking a bullet for the president.
"That was the best save I’ve ever seen Flower make, especially on Lidstrom," defenceman Brooks Orpik said. "The whole third period, it seemed like the clock was broken. It was ticking so slow."
