Live-Blogging Game 5

It’s a big game tonight, Game 5 of the Final; all tied up at two wins apiece.  We’re going to live-blog this one for you! 

Except that we’re already a little behind: watching it on the DVD, you see.  Which is the only way to go if you ask me.  We’ll blow through the commercials and the intermissions, except, since we are watching the CBC Broadcast, “Hockey Night in Canada”, we’ll stick around for “Coaches Corner with Don Cherry” after the first period.  They just played the HNIC theme which is different this year.  The old theme, perhaps the most famous tune in Canadian history, was stolen over the summer by some cheesy cable outfit which outbid the CBC for the rights.  The bidding, as I recall, went to a million dollars before the CBC—which is owned by the Canadian government, apparently—pulled out.  The new open is nice, though.  A lot of computer-generated stuff with Orr and Howe and Gretzky and old announcers and bagpipes.  We’ve skipped right through to the opening face-off.  I’m not big on the pregame garbage and nobody throws more pregame garbage at you than the people at the Joe Louis Arena.  Tonight they had the usual: a bunch of people skating around with big Red Wings flags and fireworks and an inflatable purple octopus. Whatever.  On to the game…

20:00 (Time remaining in period) I see Dennis Larue is one of the refs.  He’s an interesting guy.  I sat next to him at a playoff game about 15 years ago and we chatted the whole night.  Plus, he officiated plenty of games when I was broadcasting in the minors.  I think he has an Ivy League degree, but I can’t remember.  They’re about to put the lineups on the screen.  I think Draper has to sit and I think Maltby has to sit.  Wow.  They are both playing.  I would have gone with that kid who scored in each of the first two games Justin Abdelkader.  Pavel Datsyuk is back.  Finally.  But as he makes his debut in the Final, the question is: Is he 100%?

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17:26 Great save by Osgood and Evgeni Malkin just missed as the Pens just missed, barely, twice. 

15:49 CBC announcer (for the first time in maybe 30 years it’s not Bob Cole calling the Final) just said it’s rare to see Detroit getting out played in their own building.  Shots: Pittsburgh 3, Detroit 0.

13:00 Cleary just had Detroit’s best chance, a semi-wraparound, then got stopped on his own rebound, too.  Niklas Kronwall’s slapper got tipped and somehow Marc-Andre Fleury reacted and made a glove save.  How’d he get to that?  They’re calling Kronwall for tripping?  Gee, what a bad call.  He low-bridged him in the neutral zone.  I think it was my buddy Larue making the call, too.   They just showed a replay of Fleury’s save on Kronwall.  It looked better live.  I thought he gloved it but it glanced off his left pad which he just happened to have on the ice—just like any competent goalie would.

12:41 A Pittsburgh power play.  They’ve been killing Detroit on the PP: 4/9, 44.4% in the series.  You can’t win with numbers like that.  Total goals in the series is tied, by the way.  10-10.  Somebody almost scored for Detroit from inside the Wings line.  A clear and it took a funny hop and Fleury, headed behind his net to stop it, had to dive back out in front to deflect it.  Probably would have gone wide, anyway.  Probably…

10:39 Detroit killed it with 0 Pittsburgh shots.  Datsyuk missed Henrik Zetterberg with what looked like an easy-to-complete pass.  Is he rusty?  

8:54 Johan Franzen just walked out in front with a backhand and Fleury again makes a pad save.  Might have been Detroit’s best chance so far.  I don’t like that Bill Guerin is on the Pens.  He was with the Devils in the ‘95 sweep of Detroit.  This bothers me for some reason.  Plus, they got him at the trade deadline.  It bothers me.  I don’t know why.  They just put up a “Hockey Night Bio” of Jordan Staal.  It says he wants to meet Bobby Orr.  Hey, I’ve met Bobby Orr.  He could not have been nicer.  What a thrill.  Oddly, it was in Pittsburgh, no less: in a coffee shop of a hotel across the street from “The Igloo” the day of the NHL Draft in ‘97.  I’ve been to Bobby Orr’s hockey rink up there in his hometown in northern Ontario, too.  But, that’s another story for another time.  I’ll remember the name of the town, too.  I must be getting old if I can’t remember Bobby Orr’s hometown.  Jeez.  Now I’m forgetting the names of places I’ve actually been.

(time unknown)  THEY SCORED.  FLEURY GAVE UP A WEAK ONE!  A SHOT FROM WAY OUT THAT HE SHOULD HAVE HAD!  Let’s wait for the replays…

It’s Dan Cleary on a little pass from Datsyuk.  He was closer than I thought on first viewing, just a little inside the rim of the right circle (to Fleury’s left) but it wasn’t much of a shot. Pittsburgh defenseman Brooks Orpik screened his goalie and when the shot went through Orpik’s legs, Fleury could not react in time.  It looked like a nothing play.  I always tell my defensemen when I’m in goal, “I don’t care if you stand there, just make sure you block the shot.”  Orpik didn’t, Fleury couldn’t see it…1-0 Det.  I give up goals just like that all the time, and all the time it’s because one of my own guys has blocked my view.  Time, 13:32.  1st point of the series for Cleary and Datsyuk. 

4:25 I should check the Tigers score but I’m ah-scared to.  They’ve lost 4 straight and 6 out of 8, at least.  Oh, what the heck.  Ha, commercial break.  Back to hockey.  I checked on the web.  Tigers, 2, Angels 1.  Final.  They’d lost 9 of 13 since that 7-game win streak that put them in first place.

:21  Chris Kunitz, another guy the Pens got at the trade deadline and another guy with a Cup (with Anaheim the year the Ducks upset the Wings in the playoffs), goes off for running Chris Osgood.  Detroit PP, their first of the night. 

:00  1-0, Detroit.  Did I mention I’ve played golf with Pittsburgh coach Dan Bylsma?  It’s true.  He from Grand Haven right on the Lake Michigan shore and I met him for the first time when he played for the Long Beach Ice Dogs of the International League.  His dad wrote a book: “So You Want Your Son to Play in the NHL.”  I used to play a lot of golf with the guys on the hockey team in Grand Rapids and Bylsma would be there from time to time.  Good guy, I hate to say.

1st Intermission:  Don Cherry’s yelling at the defensemen to stop screening the goalies.  It’s becoming a nightly ritual.  But, as I say, he’s right.  He calls Miroslav Satan, (pronounced “sah-TAN”) “Satin,” as in “The Devil”.  Cherry’s upset about no Canadian fly-over at the D-Day ceremony today in Normandy. He says, “The British couldn’t get off the beaches, the Americans couldn’t get off the beaches, we were off the beaches!  We were 15 miles into France and they told us to stop because they couldn’t get off (the beaches) and we didn’t get a fly-over.”  Budd Lynch, the Red Wings PA announcer who’s been with the organization since 1949, landed on D-Day with those Canadians.  About a week later he lost an arm when a Nazi shell went clean through his shoulder.  Budd knew Conn Smythe, the Maple Leafs owner who built Maple Leaf Gardens and after whom the playoff MVP Trophy is named.  Smythe had formed up his own battalion for the war.  Artillery.  Budd says he’d tease him about being way in the back while he, Budd, was at the front.  I’m playing in Budd’s golf outing in a couple of weeks.  Cherry goes on to say the Canadian troops were the best because back then they were all volunteers.  Budd volunteered less than two weeks after Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939.  I asked him why once and he told me, “Because, my boy.  A Canadian does his duty.”  I wonder if Don Cherry knows Budd’s story.

Second Period…

18:16  2-0!!!  Pens killed off the penalty but they left Valtteri Filppula wide open out in front and he, as they say, made no mistake.  Marian Hossa made a beauty pass from the right boards to Filppula (a name which can, apparently, be pronounced 1,000 different ways) who had snuck in behind 2 defenders.  Nice play all around.  Osgood gets a helper and he earned it.  He fired it from behind the Detroit goal up the wall to Hossa who fed Filppula.  What’s the record for assists by a goaltender in a Final?  I’ll see if I can find out. 

13:49 I haven’t found it yet…BUT IT’S 3-0 DETROIT!  A power play goal by Kronwall.  They let him walk out in front from the right corner and when you get the goalie moving laterally as he did you can score and he did.  Getting close to halfway home and it’s 3-0!

13:12 Penalty on Pittsburgh, again.  Malkin with a vicious elbow on Kronwall.  Still looking on the assist thing but I did find out who scored the most goals in a Final.  It might take you a minute to remember this one. That’s right. It’s Cyclone Taylor of the Vancouver Millionaires.  In 1918.  9 goals.  In 5 games. Replay shows the Malkin’s elbow (any relation to that creepy Michelle?) was on Franzen, not Kronwall.

11:34 Detroit makes Malkin and the Pens pay with a PPG, or, Power Play Goal.  4-0, and all Fleury can do is skate around after Brian Rafalski buries a wrist shot from the right point.  Fleury never saw it because Tomas Holmstrom was, as usual, right in front of him blocking his view. 

11:08 “How about the tired, old defending Stanley Cup champs tonight?” asks the CBC color man.  “They look pretty fresh tonight,” replies the play-by-play man.  Rink reporter says Bylsma sent a player out to ask Fleury if he wanted the rest of the night off, but Fleury wants to stay in the Pens goal.  Whatever, dude.  That’s three goals in 6:42 for Detroit.

Commercial Break.  No luck on the goalie assist thing but I did notice that my buddy Matt Pavelich holds the record for Most Games by a Linesman in the Final with 56.  Talk about great guys.  His brother’s pretty cool, too.  Marty.  Won a few Cups with Detroit in the 1950’s and you won’t meet a nicer man in hockey.

8:30 My doctor had tickets to one of the first two games in Detroit and he gave them to his sons.  What a dad!  He won’t be giving them up if there’s a game 7, I think.  He wants to see the Wings win the Cup in person.  Personally, I hope it doesn’t go 7.  Unless Detroit blows this lead, that is. 

4:50 They won’t.  5-0: another power play goal.  This one by Zetterberg and they’re going to have to get Fleury out of there.  They do.  Fleury goes straight to the room without stopping at the bench or anything.  Mathieu Garon comes in comes in and becomes the 105th goalie in history to appear in a Stanley Cup Final game.  His place in history is thus assured, as is the outcome of this one.  Detroit has won 48 straight in the postseason when they’ve scored 4 goals.  They have 5 tonight.

2:03 Detroit is on a 5-on-3 power play.  The Pens are losing it.  Sidney Crosby slashed Zetterberg out of frustration and now Maxime Talbot has slashed Datsyuk.  Hacked him on the right foot, the one which is supposed to be hurt; the reason he missed the first four games of the series.  They call it tripping.

0:00 Detroit outshot Pittsburgh 15-6 in the period.  The big number though is the fact they outscored them 4-0. 

Second Intermission.  Time for a soda, no?

Last 5 minutes…still a shutout and Pascal Dupuis just tried to take Kronwall’s head off.  He gets a minor for his trouble.  Penguins changed hotels in Detroit after losing Games 1 and 2 here.  There just aren’t that many 5-star hotels in Detroit.  Where are they going to stay if there’s a Game 7?  Motel Six, for luck (because if they come back it will mean they won Game 6, get it?). Fans are trying to start the wave.  There’s no Wave at hockey games.  A lot of fans have left.  I can’t believe that.  The Final and people are leaving?  These are people who shouldn’t be there in the first place.  Pittsburgh is doing a lot of yapping at the Detroit bench for a team that’s down 5-0.  What are they saying? “You’re next,” like the Devils did during the ‘95 Final? This ain’t that, fellows.  The Penguins take more dumb penalties and the game ends with Detroit on the power play. 5-0, Detroit and a three games to two lead in The Final.  They can wrap it up Tuesday or we are going to be right back here Friday.  All in all, a great night here in Detroit.  One for the books, really.