1) Last night was undoubtedly the best game of the three Stanley Cup Final contests thus far. For one, both teams scored. There was lots of hitting and scoring chances. It was far more wide open than the first 2 games. The last point is why the penguins prevailed. The RedWings allowed the penguins to play 'their game'. The run and gun style significantly helps the penguins. Pittsburgh showed they can not stomach a tight checking close to the vest style.
2) Very impressed with the play of Tomas Holmstrom and Brooks Oprik. Both were warriors in every sense of the word last evening. They can play on our team any day! Even though last night's game was played exactly like Pittsburgh likes, they still were far from being the better team. The game could have gone either way. If not for stellar goaltending of M-A Fleury the Wings probably would be ahead 3-0, despite the Penguin-like tempo.
3) Which brings us to the goaltending issue. Can we stop the nonsense about Osgood? Some were anointing him MVP based upon his stats, not about his actual worth to his team. Sure he did his part to win games 1-2, but he was hardly the primary reason. Last night illustrated this clearly. In our opinion through 3 games: Osgood was better in game 1. Game 2 was a toss up, and Fleury was better last night. Confirming our opinion that if you exchanged each goalie onto the other team it wouldn't effect the end result of this series.
4) So where do we go from here? We believe that in Game 5 the Red Wings will do all they can to have the game be played on their terms. Expect it to be far less wide open. Expect the Penguins to get frustrated when they fail to score easily. In essence we believe we will see a repeat of games 1-2. We see last night as an aberration, not the beginning of a new trend. Make no mistake, the Red Wings are light years better right now than the Penguins. The series will/should end in Mo-town, next week. Despite what the talking heads at the network want you to believe, it is NOT a series!
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