datterberg1340

Indeed. Right now it's easy for Pens fans to say that they can repeat, and they could, but that's what every team starts to think after winning it the first time. I remember Ken Hitchcock saying after Dallas won in '99 that he'd been studying up on dynasties and he was confident they'd win a couple more Cups in a row. They did make the finals again, but lost and haven't been back since. Everything needs to go your way, you need the bounces, the team to stay healthy and hungry and determined. The Pens had all that going for them, and of course played well too, but you need more than that. They made an improbable comeback that hadn't happened for almost 40 years, and a situation like that may not happen again for another 40. Also they did benefit from playing a tired and banged up Wings team that ran out of gas and couldn't match the Pens determination, patience, and hunger. That and getting some big breaks from the refs at crucial times. I'm not saying the Wings didn't get any breaks either, but several calls and non-calls really ended up benefiting the Pens. And a team needs those kind of breaks to go their way. The chances of everything going your way 2 years in a row are just not good, just ask any Wings fan.

According to MLive, Draper had taken a stick to the throat that tore some cartilage, so yeah Then he had that groin pull after that Injury bug hit us damn hard this year

Just another bad call in an entire playoffs full of them. It's just really sad that the refs and linesmen picked for the finals are supposed to the best of the best, yet they called a very inconsistent series, letting numerous penalties go uncalled on both sides, especially interference and late hits as well as things like the icing goal and the offsides goal earlier in the series and the no-call on the too many men in Game 3. Tough pill to swallow, especially since we lost. Hell, last year, even after we won the Cup, I was still fuming about all the sh!t the Pens got away with in the last few minutes of Game 6- Malone chopping Lilja's stick out of his hands, Dats getting taken down before he can make for the empty net, etc.

I couldn't agree more. One article I read took note at around game 4 or 5 of the Finals that the number of interference penalties called was reduced by 1/2 from last year's finals to this one, and it sure wasn't b/c there was less of it going on, the refs just swallowed their whistles, or stuck them up their own asses and then made inconsistent calls the rest of the way. Another problem is some teams know this happens and take every advantage of it (the Ducks). And it wasn't surprising to see the Pens copy Anaheim's strategy against us, it ended up working. I think Hal Gill got away with some pretty blatant interference calls throughout the finals and probably the whole playoffs judging by what I saw of him in the Finals, and looking at his stats he was only called for 3 minors the entire playoffs- he could've been whistled for three penalties in any one of the games in the finals, that guy is slow as hell and should have been left behind in the so-called "new NHL". And that's not to say that the Wings don't do it too, hell everybody does it, and calls are going to be missed, but the coaches, players, and fans deserve to know what a penalty is and have it called consistently, no matter what time of year it is

Precisely. Like Babcock said, you have to be good and lucky, lucky in the bounces and in health. The Pens I'm sure had guys playing hurt too, but I seriously doubt they had as many as we did, especially our star players, and I wonder how many man-games lost to injury we had this playoffs compared to last year?

Losing like that is about as hard as it gets for the players, but losing is also the greatest teacher, b/c a lot of the guys on the team won their first trip to the finals, while a few hold-overs had to lose in '95 before winning; but Hank said it best "We had our win last year but we'll learn from this too... We'll come back stronger" Just look at the Pens, they lost last year and won this year, just sucks that sometimes you learn in reverse order or can't just learn from always winning

Defense wins championships and you have to be able to win on the road, which the Pens were able to do and we weren't. If you look at our wins, we held them to 2 goals in 3 wins, and in our losses we gave up 12 goals in 4 games Heck, even looking back at last year's finals, it was our D that got it done- 3 goals against in 4 wins, 7 against in 2 losses (if I remember correctly) We actually out-scored the Pens in the series 17-14, just didn't score when we needed it and played from behind too much, made it too hard on ourselves

The biggest problem was Osgood raised his level of play in the post-season and the defense never really did, they never got on the same page. Defense wins championships, and it's remarkable we got as far as we did despite a lot of lackluster performances from our D(I feel Ozzie had to bail us out on many occasions). We relied on our offense too much and you can't expect to win a championship with that mindset. Congrats to Ozzie on a great post-season, hope we're back next year with a tougher, meaner defense to help you out

Flip was very good this post-season, I kind of thought of him as this year's Kronwall with how he stepped up his game in the post-season He still can get better too and we have him locked up for 4 more years

Lids, Raf, Kronner, Ericsson are all givens, and so is Stuart(he has a no-trade clause for the first 2 years of his contract), though I wish we could dump him, and not just b/c of his 2 horrible gaffes in Game 7, but b/c he's not really worth a 3.75 mil cap hit (If we had signed Hossa before we re-signed Stuart then Stuart definitely would've gone elsewhere) Lebda may be gone, and Meech as well. I just hope Lilja will be able to come back, word is he may not even be ready for training camp I doubt we'd get Bouwmeester, even if we let Hossa walk, which I think we should do. I think we ought to go out and get a little more gritty. Really what we need to do is just be better defensively, defense wins championships, and it was our defense that was a big problem all year and we never fixed it and it cost us in the worst possible way I wouldn't mind Bouwmeester on our team, but I would think someone else will offer more $ and he probably wants to cash in

Good point- they rarely put in 60 minutes, even with the Cup on the line. The urgency and hunger weren't there and it just makes it more frustrating to never know what could have been if they had played to their potential, despite the injuries and no "puck luck"

Yes I agree with you, it just bugs me sometimes b/c that style does involve more of the pre-lockout clutch-and-grab crap that was supposed to be a thing of the past. They call you for it during the reg. season but when the playoffs arrive the refs swallow their whistles a bit more even though they were adamant they would keep the same standards in the playoffs, which clearly was not the case in this postseason, and not just the Finals either

It's also a shame that Ducks style hockey should result in getting numerous penalties called b/c basically it's playing pre-lockout style clutch and grab hockey which was supposed to be a thing of the past. And yes it would have been nice to have started the Finals June 5th, but b/c of the contract w/NBC and the fact Conan O'Brien was taking over for Leno meant the Wings did not get the rest they deserved after finishing off the Hawks in only 5 games despite the injuries, and also looking back if the Canes had won just ONE freakin' game against the Pens it would have pushed the start date of the Finals to the 5th; but hey, them's are the breaks, and I really do think the Pens got them in spades while the Wings seemed to have used ALL theirs up last year, b/c it always seemed to be an uphill struggle

You have to be good and lucky, the Wings were neither by the time the Finals rolled around- I mean Ericsson has to get his appendix removed? Lidstrom's playoff iron-man streak ends? Pavel's foot injury (I think it must have been broken), Lilja going down in a fight from Feb. 28th and they say he still may not be ready for training camp? And I read on MLive Z was playing with some sort of wrist injury? And we had Cleary playing through an injury, and maybe Raf wasn't 100% coming back, and losing Kopecky in the Ana series as well, it got to be ridiculous and it really is amazing we came as close as we did despite all that alone, let alone all the other factors that didn't go our way, but it still stings pretty damn bad right now

Yeah, even in tonight's game they made plenty of UNFORCED ERRORS, sloppy outlet passes on powerplays and otherwise, and I don't know, they just seemed discombobualted(sp?). Not that I'd really like to see it b/c it would mean we didn't make it, but it would be interesting to see what an Anaheim/Pitt series would be like, and I'd also like to see the Pens have to go through the Ducks before reaching the Finals and see how "fresh" they'd be

Exactly, the officiating is getting downright disgraceful. To say it is inconsistent is a gross understatement. After all the league's talk about how a penalty is penalty whether it be in the regular season or the playoffs is completely tossed out the window, and add to that the 2 ref system has almost as many flaws as the old one ref way- case in point, in game 6 Z is robbed by Fleury in close, then Staal pushes him into Fleury- the ref close by makes the correct no-call b/c it's obvious Staal pushed Z into Fleury, let's play on, right? No, b/c the d-bag at center ice decides from his piss-poor vantage point that Hank must've run Fleury and puts him in the box. And that's just one of many, many moronic calls typical throughout the entire season both regular and playoffs.

Yeah I did feel the Pens got very fortunate with the way the Finals were called b/c even Bylsma said they tried to copy what Anaheim did to us with all the subtle interference and late hits and they pretty well knew they would get away with a lot of it, I mean Matt Cooke and Hal Gill and Kunitz were total punks the entire series and none of them served more than a couple of minors, that and I think we were just too banged up by the time the Finals started, damn Conan O'Brien taking over for Leno, couldn't he have waited another week or two?

Yeah they had no "puck pursuit" and it seemed they waited for the puck to come to them instead of going to get it, they did not initiate nearly enough and most importantly they did not DRIVE THE FRONT OF THE NET, I can't remember how many times they said that was the reason for their success early in the playoffs, I'll never know why they stopped doing it in the freakin' Finals.....

Pretty damn depressed and disgusted right now, it's gonna be real hard to fall asleep; I think the only thing that could've been worse is if we had lost 1-0 in OT, that would have been even sh!ttier, but losing 2-1 on home ice with the Cup on the line is bad enough- but in the end the Pens were the hungrier and more fortunate team, and you need those two things going for you And yes it is nice to be able to fall back on our previous Cup wins, we need only think back to the previous spring, and I hope we make the right moves to re-load for another run next year!

I hope we do not re-sign him. Even if he takes a discount, it'll still mean we lose too much depth as a result and I really think now is the time to bring up some of the youngsters and see what they can do, Hossa just doesn't quite fit in, he had an awful playoffs, not just the finals, and he doesn't deserve to stay with the team

I agree, if the series was played with both teams fully rested and healthy we would mop the floor with 'em, but they were fortunate to stay healthy and we were dropping like flies and coming back at half-strength in some cases, and those are the breaks, we got them last year, they got them this year; yeah they'll maybe be even more hard-pressed to repeat than we were, Malkin's salary shoots up to Crosby's level this coming season, so their depth is gonna take another hit

In a game like this, everything is magnified so Stuart's going to get a lot of sh!t for his 2 big mistakes that seriously hurt us, but in the end we did lose as a team I think it was more our depth guys didn't come through and theirs did- all their goals in games 6 & 7 were from Staal, Kennedy, and Talbot, and all we could get was one each from freakin' Draper and Ericsson Hudler, Samuelsson, Cleary, guys that all scored in last year's finals all had very quiet series this time around, and it of course would have been nice if Hossa hadn't completely disappeared Sometimes I think our depth hurt us in that the big guns maybe didn't feel enough pressure to score, that it was OK if they didn't b/c the depth would bail them out, which worked for awhile, but in the end of course caught up with us

First of all I just want to say that we did not deserve to win the Cup with the way we played the last 2 games, the effort simply was not there and we definitely reverted to our regular season ways with the "we'll start trying after we've dug ourselves a big hole" mentality- there are about 3 players from our team I feel bad for- Ozzie (hung out to dry with almost no offensive support the last 2 games), Filppula (played pretty well most of the series, one of the only forwards I noticed competing hard most of the time), and Abdelkader (kid came in cold and scored 2 huge goals the first 2 games and then gets benched for a guy whose only real worth is winning faceoffs) Also no one likes to talk about it or admit it but injuries caught up with us- A LOT of guys were significantly banged up, we'll find out who was really hurting over the next few days, and I think in the long run it was having to go through the gruelling Anaheim series that ended up costing us, that series took so much out of them and they never had time to recover One thing I really don't like about how the series went was the officiating (I know, another excuse) BUT I do feel that the Pens got some big breaks at crucial times- looking at the box scores in the series, the Pens got the first PP or first two PP in six of the seven games, that's kinda fishy, and there were several blatant non-calls the refs just let go (I'm sure we can all think of several) What worries me is that the Pens tried their best Anaheim impersonation against us and it worked- they knew they would get away with all the subtle interference and late hits b/c it's the playoffs, and the worrisome part is that other teams are going to try and emulate that since it won the Pens the Cup Ultimately it's a shame we couldn't overcome all the adversity we were saddled with, and it's actually pretty amazing we came so close despite everything, but man, this one's gonna sting for a long time

exactly, said it all right there