The young Penguins lifting Lord Stanley's Cup makes for sexier headlines than the always reliable Red Wings.
There is a new Stanley Cup champion as the work week begins, and the National Hockey League is better for it.
Even to those of us who saw the Detroit Red Wings as a team with so many heroes that it could never go wanting in search of someone to don the cape, we realized the obvious as the Stanley Cup final wore on: Whether or not the Pittsburgh Penguins would turn out to be the better team, they are undoubtedly the better story.
Sidney Crosby is a sexier sell than Henrik Zetterberg, at least in North America -- not to mention seven years younger.
Pavel Datsyuk is an artisan whose skills are appreciated by hockey people the way an opera critic differentiates between a good tenor and a great one. But Evgeni Malkin’s game is the Van Halen concert to Datsyuk’s Baroque concerto.
The two are perhaps at a par to the hockey aficionado, but Malkin’s power game speaks louder and more clearly than Datsyuk’s subtle brilliance, at a time when hockey is still trying to bring new fans on board. And if they still can’t follow the puck on TV in America, surely much of Datsyuk’s repertoire is wasted there as well.
And then there is Crosby, whose summer exploits with the Stanley Cup will be tracked in a way that Zetterberg’s or Nicklas Lidstrom’s never would here in North America. If you thought Dan Cleary Day made some noise in Newfoundland last summer, wait for the Cup to come to Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.
Let’s face it: Change is good. Fresh and young can never be bad.
Even if, like me, you thought the Red Wings were unbeatable, you can see that passing the torch makes for better ink than the same group clinging to a title -- no matter how deep our respect runs for general manage Ken Holland and his organization, undoubtedly the best in the entire National Hockey League.
But while we’re eating a little crow on the prediction, we’re not wiling to back off the position that this isn’t like the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Islanders back in 1984. That Islanders team disappeared after Edmonton beat them.
Detroit could well win the West again next year, or the year after. Any organization that has played in eight of the past 14 Conference finals is not about to be vanquished by a one-goal loss in a Game 7, and surely not one that scouts and drafts the way these Red Wings do.
We are left to wonder though, what happened to some of these players?
Where was The Mule, Johan Franzen, in this final? He lost his way to the front of the net, and never found the map again.
Marian Hossa was even worse, and one would have to seriously question his gamesmanship before signing him long-term this summer, as Holland is said to be close to doing.
The venerable Tomas Holmstrom, at 36, is looking very much like a veteran who will be wrapping up his wonderful career in Djurgarden or Frolunda. And as much as we hate to say this of two guys who have been a sports writer’s best friends over the years, the checking duo of Kris Draper (38) and Kirk Maltby (36) have ground their way on to Holland’s to-do list as well.
But the single most challenging notion for this Detroit team, when it comes to sticking with the young Penguins -- or the Chicago Blackhawks and Washington Capitals -- will be the stark reality that Lidtsrom’s time as the best blue-liner in the NHL, at age 39, is reaching an end.
The Red Wings have for more than a decade gone to war each and every night with the best defenceman on the ice -- no matter who the opponent happened to be. It’s a luxury beyond comparison when it comes to running the power play, slowing a game down on a tired night for the team, or spearheading that patented push that Detroit has always been able to muster when trailing by one, or when they sense the opponent is on the run.
You’ve got Sergei Zubov? We’ve got Lidstrom.
You’ve got Scott Niedermayer? Chris Pronger? Mathieu Schneider? Zdeno Chara?
Never has Detroit looked at that matchup and thought itself to be at a disadvantage. But that singular advantage -- the Lidstrom advantage -- is waning now, and will soon disappear. A six-time Norris Trophy winner and first-ballot Hall of Famer, Lidstrom probably made more mistakes in this final than he had in any 10 series he would have played three years ago.
He is still exquisite as a defenceman. But the blade has dulled, and the butcher now works harder to carve the same cut of meat that was once easy work.
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is a product of a post-lockout economy that almost forbids a dynasty. They lost Ryan Whitney and Ryan Malone after their ’08 run, and will likely take more hits this summer.
The only way to stay with a team like Detroit is to be able to match their scouting, and though Pittsburgh has shown it can draft well from the top of the draft, let’s see how the Penguins scouts pick from the No. 29 or 30 hole like the great Detroit scout Hakan Andersson.
It is Pittsburgh’s time. There -- we said it.
They were the better team by the end of this series.
It is hard to fathom, however, that their stay on top will last as long as the last guy’s did.
