Penguins Force Stanley Cup Finals GameOn Tuesday evening, the Pittsburgh Penguins treated their home fans to one last win, holding on to beat the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. This sets up a decisive game 7, to be held in Detroit on Friday night, with the Stanley Cup on the line. While anything can happen in one game, Detroit has to be confident of their chances. For the entire series the home team has won every game. The last game in Detroit, Game 5, was a 5-0 route during which the Red Wings exploded on the Penguins, who didn't seem to have any kind of answer. The Penguins though will hope to get more of a performance like they did on Tuesday night, where they dominated most of the game and survived a late Red Wings push without caving into the pressure. Pittsburgh out shot Detroit 12 to 3 in the opening period, but with the stellar play of Chris Osgood the game remained scoreless. However it took less than a minute in the second period for the Penguins to jump onto the board. Jordan Staal took a shot on the break, grabbed his own rebound and then put it behind Osgood for his fourth of the playoffs. Tyler Kennedy and Rob Scuderi tallied assists on the play.
In the third period, Kennedy scored his own goal, coming from behind the net before squaring up with a quick wrist shot, this with assists from Maxime Talbot and Ruslan Fedotenko. With a 2-0 lead it looked like the Penguins would cruise towards Game 7. And indeed, it was only thanks to the continued efforts of Osgood that the Red wings were the close, as Fedotenko and Malkin both had amazing opportunities turned away by the Detroit net minder. But the Red Wings don't die easy, and just two and a half minutes later Kris Draper scored his first goal of the postseason to bring the score to 2-1 with more than half of the period remaining to play. Detroit began to put on the pressure as the Penguins got two consecutive penalties. They turned the tides and out shot Pittsburgh 14-7 in the final session. The best opportunities came with less than 90 seconds left in the game. Dan Cleary managed to escape into a breakaway but was denied on a backhand attempt by Marc Andre Fleury. With under 30 seconds left in the game Fleury made a save and ended up on one side of the crease, leaving the net wide open with a free rebound.
Scuderi ended up as the de facto goaltender, turning back three shots with his stick and skate before a pile up in the crease of nearly every player on the ice cause a whistle to be blown. The puck never found its way in the net, and the Penguins held on to survive for that one final game. After months of battle, there is only one game left to determine the Stanley Cup Champion, as the Penguins head to Detroit for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Friday night.
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