Penguins try to redefine finals
PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Penguins’ season was ticking away. Champagne was being delivered to the Detroit Red Wings’ locker room at Joe Louis Arena and the Stanley Cup had been polished to a blinding shine.
In the first defining moment for a young team, Maxime Talbot -- on the ice in place of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, brought the Penguins even with 34.3 seconds left in the third period by scoring a tenacious, second-effort goal.
Despite being short on defense after Sergei Gonchar crashed into the boards and was engulfed in back spasms, the Penguins mustered a magnificent effort. Backed by Fleury’s 55-save performance they won on a triple-overtime goal by Petr Sykora, who had called his shot and turned words into deeds.
It was stirring. Exciting. A great spectacle.
And tonight at Mellon Arena they must do it all again.
Not the overtime part, necessarily. Just the part where they skate off triumphantly.
If they don’t, the clock will run out on their dreams.
“I think any time you go through something like that, come out with a win, to see the way everyone kept battling and didn’t give up, it certainly means a lot to everyone,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said.
“And having gone through that, I think we’re better for it.”
Better, absolutely.
Being good enough to push the finals to a seventh game at Detroit on Saturday will call for them to reach a level they’ve never approached before.
Sort of like Fleury’s performance in Game 5.
If they need an encore, he said Tuesday, it’s no problem.
“I’ll be ready,” he said, “and I’m sure everybody in the room will be ready also. And we just won’t quit. We’re going to go hard and try to get that win again.”
It’s not impossible that this series, seemingly so one-sided after the Red Wings started out with back-to-back shutouts, will go a full and fully dramatic seven games.
The Penguins are 9-1 at home in the playoffs, losing only to the Red Wings in Game 4. They can gain strength from their resilience and from seeing their second line, anchored by Sykora and Evgeni Malkin, become a factor Monday for the first time.
“I think we got the momentum going right now, and we can’t get too high. We have to just really get to the calm stage like before Game 5 and nothing really changes for us,” said Sykora, who scored a quintuple-overtime goal for the Ducks in 2003 to win the opener of their second-round playoff series against Dallas.
“I think I know for them they kind of had it in their pocket, and it was going to be hard for them to get up for the game too. So I think it’s going to be a huge game.”
The Red Wings say they’re not afraid to play on hostile ice after closing out their first three series on the road. They eliminated the Nashville Predators in six games, the Colorado Avalanche in a sweep and the Dallas Stars in six after building a 3-1 series lead.
But they also realize the Penguins have so much incentive to leave everything on the ice tonight in their home finale.
“We know that coming off a win they’re going to be a confident team. We’re feeling the same way after a win too,” Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom said.
“So on the losing end, when you come back for the next one, we know we have to be even more prepared. . . . We know we have to tighten up defensively and play a little bit better. But we had great chances too. You have to take some of the good things we did with us to the next game.”
But not the fall-behind-then-squander-a-lead bad things.
“As far as carryover from that, it’s a lesson learned,” Detroit Coach Mike Babcock said.
“They’re good players. It won’t happen again. Sometimes you need to be reminded.”
Babcock coached the Ducks in 2003, when they lost the seventh game of the finals at New Jersey. He was 34.3 seconds from having the Cup placed in his arms Monday.
“It’s nice to be close to it,” he said. “Be nicer to have it.”
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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.
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High ratings
Monday night’s triple-overtime Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals on NBC earned a 4.3 overnight rating and an 8 share (5 p.m.-9:45 p.m. PDT), the best overnight rating for a Stanley Cup finals Game 5 in six years. The rating, which peaked at a 5.8/10 from 8-8:30 p.m. PDT, was up 79% over last year’s Game 5 on NBC (Ducks-Ottawa, 2.4/4).
MONDAY’S TOP 10 MARKETS:
*--* 1. Pittsburgh 35.4/52 2. Detroit 29.6/46 3. Buffalo 10.2/17 4. Denver 7.2/12 5. Minneapolis 7.1/13 6. St. Louis 6.2/10 T7. Philadelphia 4.9/9 T7. Nashville 4.9/8 9. Washington, D.C. 4.7/9 10. Las Vegas 4.4/7 *--*
