Editor’s note: My brother-in-law, Dave, is a native of Pitts­burgh and a huge Pen­guins fan.  he has attended each of the Pens’ home games and two in Detroit.  Here is his account of last night’s game 6 action:

Arrival

No out­door video for tonight’s game thanks to NBC.  Jeff Jimerson’s band Air­borne plays a free con­cert instead to get the crowd going.  For those not famil­iar with Jeff Jimer­son, he’s a local guy who sings most of the national anthems at Mel­lon Arena.

Just as I’m near­ing the doors to the arena I hear Jeff Jimer­son announce they will play one more song.  I’m uneasy as their last song is Journey’s “Don’t stop Believin.”  I under­stand the sym­bol­ism, but I just don’t like the ref­er­ence to “South Detroit,” which seems to be Joe Louis Arena’s national anthem.

Another “white­out” at Mel­lon Arena.  Free t-shirts and rally tow­els handed out.

I’ve now accu­mu­lated a full wardrobe of white Pens t-shirts from the past two Stan­ley Cup Runs.

I’ve noticed a smat­ter­ing of Wings fans in the Mel­lon Arena con­courses, notice­ably more than Games 3 and 4, but noth­ing like the amount of Pens fans I’ve seen at Games 1 and Game 5 in Detroit.

T –10:00

10 min­utes to the drop of the puck and I notice local NBC/WPXI news anchor Jodine Costanza take her seat with her fam­ily in the row in front or me.

T –7:34

Petr Sykora is announced as a starter and Miroslav Satan as a scratch.  Ner­vous applause follows.

Sykora has been benched since the 2^nd round.  The knock on his game has been lack of phys­i­cal play and rel­a­tively poor speed/skating abil­ity as com­pared to the likes of Crosby/Malkin/Zetterberg/Datsyuk.  Sykora is a pure sniper, with a deadly shot, but if the game requires tough play on the boards and check­ing he wilts.  (Sykora is likely play­ing his last game as a Penguin—regardless of the out­come of the game or series).

T –7:00

The “Let’s Go Pens” chants truly begin, brought on by the video board mon­tage of Pens high­lights and AC/DC’s “Thun­der­struck” loudly blar­ing.  A Pens fan dressed as Hol­ly­wood Hogan with his sun­glasses, feather boa, ban­dana and dark stub­ble beard with blonde mus­tache is cap­tured on the video board urg­ing the fans to be louder with his hand near his ear.

National Anthem

Jeff Jimer­son receives a great ova­tion and deliv­ers another fine rendition.

Game On

Pens start the game with the 3^rd line (Staal, Kennedy & Cooke) vs. Zetter­berg and Datsyuk’s line.  I love that the 3^rd line is start­ing the game—its sends a mes­sage that the Pens going to work hard tonight.

All series I’ve been say­ing that the 3^rd line may be the most impor­tant to the Pens suc­cess.  They hit hard, skate fast, cycle well in the offen­sive zone and play good defense—especially Staal.  At 20 years of age Staal is sure to win a hand­ful of Selke tro­phies over his career.  Since he began play­ing with the Pens two years ago as an 18 year old, he has been thrust onto the penalty kill and impor­tant face-offs.

As I am stand­ing cheer­ing at the start of the game wear­ing my white Staal jer­sey for the white­out, I’m think­ing “If the Pens are going to win this game they need the 3^rd line to play big.”

Start of 1st Period

Pens get the first shot and seem deter­mined to come out strong and put the pres­sure on Osgood.

The play is fast and furious—predominantly in the Detroit end.

Crosby & Malkin are on the same line and Crosby has a chance on a rebound opportunity.

The first 2 ½ min­utes are all Pens.

First Break in the Action

The Pens pull out the Steel­ers’ Mike Tom­lin “Let’s Go Pens” video to get the crowd going.  The crowd goes crazy!

16:25

It’s been all Pens so far, but Detroit coun­ters with a pass to Zetter­berg down the slot to give him a pseudo-breakaway.  Fleury makes the save and Zetter­berg ends up in the Pens net, called for a penalty.

Zetter­berg and Dat­syuk scare me to death!

Pens Power Play

The Pens seem to get some pres­sure down low in the Wings end, but as with most Pens power plays, they tend to get one shot and the Wings clear.  The Pens get about 2 or 3 shots and Sykora makes his first appear­ance on the ice with the 2^nd PP unit.  It seems the Sykora will be used in a lim­ited capac­ity, per­haps in PP opportunities.

Wings kill the Pens PP.

Back and forth play, but the Pens seem to be more aggressive.

Malkin looks strong on the puck, back check­ing well.

Geurin is tak­ing a lot of shots from long range and sharp angles to put pres­sure on Osgood and look­ing for rebounds.  Guerin seems to be play­ing hard, show­ing vet­eran leadership.

11:13

TV time­out.  Fans are ener­gized by their favorite video clip:  Sat­ur­day Night Live’s famous Christo­pher Walken/Will Far­rell “More Cow­bell.”

I’ve noticed that Malkin’s par­ents, Vladimir and Natalia, (who have become local celebri­ties), are sit­ting in Sec­tion B in the cor­ner behind the Pens goal.  Natalia is notice­able ner­vous, on the edge of her seat and appears to be pray­ing.  I’ll take a men­tal note of that and try to watch her reac­tion the rest of the game.

Some­day I’d like to try Natalia’s famous Red Borscht.

9.30

Crosby and Sykora bust into the Wings’ zone with another Pen on a 3 on 2 but mis­fire.  Damn!  I had the feel­ing Sykora would score and redeem his poor play­off per­for­mance, but not so.

7:21

Shots are 8–2 in favor of the Pens.  Most of the play has been dic­tated by the Pens’ strong play in the Detroit end.

6:31

Pens’ Power Play #2:  Inter­fer­ence call on Filp­pula as he caused Guerin go down at cen­ter ice.  All the momen­tum seems to be in the Pens favor and Guerin seems to be really involved in lead­ing the team.

Malkin’s mother still praying.

Huge if the Pens can score.  Pens lose face-off, Geno’s on the right point (not sure how I feel about that), Crosby with a shot, but no Pens in front of the net.  Gon­char and the Pens are too slow bring­ing the puck back up after another Wings’ clear.  Power Play killed.

I’ve notice that while the Wings only have 2 shots it seems that when they do shoot from the point they are con­sciously shoot­ing high on Fleury (prob­a­bly because Fleury has a ten­dency to drop into the but­ter­fly).  The Wings also seem to be shoot­ing wide look­ing for the rebounds off the boards like at Joe Louis.

The Wings only have 2 shots, but they remain dan­ger­ous when the get any sus­tained play in the Pens end.

2:00

Zetterberg/Datsyuk line is matched against Crosby.  This is the match up the Wings want.

1:37

Wings gain con­trol in the Pens’ zone and Dat­syuk makes a sick cut-back move on Crosby in the cor­ner and a great pass to Zetter­berg who is wide open on the far post.  Fleury makes a great save.  It’s only the Wing’s 3^rd offi­cial shot of the period, but each shot has been a great scor­ing change.  You can tell that Fleury is “ON”.  Shots are 11–3 in the Pens favor, but Dat­syuk just undressed Crosby on that play.

End of 1st Period

Shots are 12–3 in the Pens favor at the end of the period, but the qual­ity scor­ing chances seem even.  80% of the game has seemed to be in the Wings zone, but the Wings pos­sess­ing the puck for only 20% of the time may be enough for the Wings to win.  The Wings are so dan­ger­ous with Zetter­berg and Dat­syuk on the same line.

There is ner­vous ten­sion in the air.  The Wings have killed two power plays and you know the next penalty will be on Pitts­burgh, even though the Wings do not appear to be press­ing enough or aggres­sive enough to draw any penal­ties.  The Wings have weath­ered the 1^st period storm by clear­ing pucks from in front of their net and break­ing up passes, despite being heav­ily out shot.

The first goal in this game will be HUGE.

Dur­ing the inter­mis­sion at Mel­lon Arena you can text a mes­sage to the Pens score board and it is dis­played for all to see.   I look up to the score­board right before the end of the inter­mis­sion to read “Our Burgh is bet­ter than your ‘Berg.”  Let’s hope so.

Start of 2nd Period

The crowd is deaf­en­ingly loud—sensing some­thing will happen.

19:09

GOAL by Staal! The Staal/Kennedy/Cooke line delivers.

The play started with Staal block­ing an attempted dump pass by a Wing on the Pens own blue line.  Staal grabbed the bound­ing puck and raced down the boards with his wing­man break­ing for cen­ter ice.  Staal’s pass to his winger was taken away by a defend­ing Wing so Staal shot, Osgood gave up a rebound, and Staal pounced on his rebound to score.

The crowed is crazy!  Staal’s defense and drive to the net pay off again.

If the Pens cap­i­tal­ize on this momen­tum and get another goal quickly this game could break wide open for the Pens.

Play resumes

Fedotenko takes a hard hit on the boards in his own end to get a pass to Tal­bot that gen­er­ates a strong rush.  You can see and sense that the Pens are mak­ing every sac­ri­fice nec­es­sary to win.  Their play exhibits true heart and desperation.

17:47

Franzen and Crosby race toward a puck headed to the Pens’ end for a pos­si­ble icing.  Crosby beats Franzen to the puck and Franzen crashes hard into the board head first.  Ouch!

Play is about the resume, but Osgood takes his hel­met off.  Osgood appears to be ges­tur­ing that some­thing is bro­ken on his mask and the game is delayed—to the cho­rus of “Bull Shit, Bull Shit” from the crowd.  Whether the delay is a for­tu­itous break for the Wings, or Osgood’s vet­eran savvy fak­ing an equip­ment prob­lem to give Franzen a needed breath, I can’t tell.  But the crowd is crazy and clips from the movie “300” when King Leonidas says “This is where we stand and fight” have this place as loud as it can get.

17:46

Crosby/Kunitz/Guerin vs. Zetter­berg line.  Face-off won again by Zetterberg.

Malkin appears to be play­ing on both the 2^nd and 4^th lines tonight as I’ve now seen him with dif­fer­ent wingers, prob­a­bly a result of insert­ing Sykora back into the line up.

16:19

The Pens 3^rd line con­tin­ues to be strong.  Their best line tonight.  Shots are 16–6 in favor of the Pens.

15:32

Geno gives a break­out pass to Fedotenko for a scor­ing chance and the Pens con­tinue to put the pres­sure on.  Malkin looks strong and is try­ing to draw the game to him to pass to open wingers.

Crosby is now matched up against Draper.

14:14

Kunitz lays a big hit on Rafal­ski and the strong play con­tin­ues.  You can sense that the Pens are the stronger and more aggres­sive team.

There is a clear non-call on the Wings’ Lebda as he holds Adams’ hockey stick between his legs as Adams tries to skate away for a loose puck in the Wings’ end. Adams has been work­ing hard tonight and may get his due.

13:00

Cooke is all over Dat­syuk up and down the ice.  Cooke knocks Datsyuk’s hel­met off, picks his pocket and sets up a scor­ing chance.  There could have been a penalty called if it was a reg­u­lar sea­son game, but not in the play­offs.  The Wings have no answer for the Staal/Kennedy/Cooke line.

11:27

Shots are 21–7 in favor of the Pens.

10:35

Sykora sac­ri­fices his body block­ing a shot.  Sykora is obvi­ously doing every­thing he can to con­tribute.  I’ve never seen Sykora lay down to block a shot before.  He may have just earned him­self a spot in the line up for Game 7 if the Pens win tonight.

7:28

Good back and forth play.  Wings are press­ing, forecheck­ing hard.

Pens’ 3^rd line con­tin­ues to play strong.  Pens are block­ing shots, tak­ing hits to spring their team­mates on rushes, and are being care­ful not to turn over the puck in the mid­dle of the ice.  Shots are 21–9 in the Pens’ favor.

6:15

Crosby’s line on the ice again.  Sykora on the ice too, but clearly hob­bled after his blocked shot.  The Pens con­tinue to weather strong pres­sure from the Wings, but the Wings seem close to mak­ing some­thing happen.

As the period comes to end there is a notice­able urgency by the Wings’ play, but the shots are still 21 to 10 in the Pens’ favor.

TV Time­out

The atten­dance is announced.  Another stand­ing room only crowd of 17,132.  The Pens’ 118th con­sec­u­tive sell out.

Malkin’s mother is still pray­ing.  She looks like she can’t stand to watch.

3:31

Guerin gets the Pens’ 22^nd shot.  The Pens went nearly 8 min­utes between their 21^st and 22^nd shot.  Wow!

Another TV Timeout

The crowd is ener­gized by Guns N” Roses “Wel­come to the Jun­gle.”  The crowd is insane.  The crowd has been loud the entire game.

Crosby matched against Filp­pula.  I like this match up for the Pens.  I can almost smell another Pens goal.

Malkin and Crosby are due for a goal, but they’ve seem to be con­cen­trat­ing more on back checking—there’s noth­ing wrong with that.

2:00

Zetter­berg man­ages to knife through defend­ers, move a back­hand to fore­hand shot and hit the post!  Wow.  That almost com­pletely changed the game.

I have so much respect for Zetter­berg.  He never seems to make mis­takes and always cap­i­tal­izes on turnovers and lose pucks.  I’m frankly sur­prised he didn’t score.  What a big break for the Pens.

0:30

Malkin get a chance around the Wings net!  The Pens seize some momen­tum back late in the period near the buzzer.  Shots are 24–12 in favor the Pens.

End of 2nd Period

The game is 1–0 in favor of the Pens, and the Pens have out shot, out hit, and out hus­tled the Wings as a team.  Great indi­vid­ual plays by Zetter­berg and Dat­syuk are keep­ing the Wings on the cusp of scor­ing.  That’s what is so dan­ger­ous about the Wings. They can be totally dom­i­nated for most of the game and within a span of 1 minute Zetter­berg and Dat­syuk can swirl and stick han­dle for a great scor­ing chance.

After two peri­ods I don’t think Hossa has decided to play tonight.  In fact, he’s been silent the entire series.  It’s almost as if Hossa is just rid­ing Zetterberg’s, Datsyuk’s and Lidstrom’s coat tails hop­ing they will win him the Cup.  At least when Ray Bourque went to Col­orado for a chance to win the Cup he con­tributed.  Most of Hossa’s shifts involve him get­ting the puck in his zone, tak­ing a few strides and throw­ing the puck towards the other side of the ice.

Start of 3rd Period

Stats show that the Pens are out hit­ting the Wings 23 to 16.

The crowd is pumped with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

Pens 3^rd line again starts a period against the Zetter­berg line.

The Wings con­tinue to shoot wide, seem­ingly hop­ing for a rebound off the boards.

19:39

Crosby matched up against Filp­pula again.

Side Note:  Watch­ing Guerin stick­han­dle and shield the puck with his body brings back images of the Pens’ power for­ward Kevin Stevens from the early 90’s Cup cham­pi­onship teams.

17:30

3 big saves by Fleury.  The hit­ting picks up too.

15:00

Crowd is chant­ing “Let’s Go Pens!”  I’ve been com­ing to Pens games since the late 80’s and it’s as loud as I’ve ever heard it dur­ing game play in a game at Mel­lon Arena.

14:25

Tyler Kennedy scores on a 2^nd chance shot from the side of the net.  The 3^rd line is win­ning this game for the Pens.

Video of WWE wrestler Mr. Kennedy yelling “That was a goal by Tyler Kennedy!    Kennedy!!!!!”   (I wish I could find a clip of this video on YouTube.)

The crowd may blow the roof off of the arena.  Maybe they should open it up.

12:12

27–17 shots in favor of the Pens.

TV Time­out

The score­board shows a clip of the Steel­ers’ Hines Ward, James Far­rior and Casey Hamp­ton chant­ing “Let’s Go Pens.”  The crowd is crazy.  They showed this in Game 3 as well.  My only worry is that Detroit scored imme­di­ately after­wards.  Let’s hope it doesn’t hap­pen again.

11:59

You’ve got to be eff­ing kid­ding me!  Draper scores for Detroit.  The Pens must burn that clip of Hines Ward, James Far­rior and Casey Hampton!

The Wings goal came off of a pass from Eric­s­son across the blue line to Lid­strom, who took a shot from the point result­ing in a rebound for Draper.  I have never seen a team that is so good at D to D cross ice passes along the blue line as the Wings.  It is sick. They move the puck per­fectly.  Lid­strom is so calm.

11:30

The Wings almost score again!  The puck rebounded high in the air above the goal behind Fleury and appeared to be des­tined to fall into the goal crease.

The Pens need to weather this push by Detroit.

10:42

Detroit draws a penalty on a scrap in their zone.  Malkin sig­naled for crosschecking—he prob­a­bly did.  Huge penalty con­sid­er­ing the swing of momen­tum to Detroit’s side after Draper’s goal.

Through 2 ½ peri­ods the Pens have avoided a penalty.  I thought they would have a chance to repeat their per­for­mance against the Cap­i­tals and play a penalty-free game.

Now its time for a big penalty kill for Pitts­burgh.  A goal by Detroit could be devastating.

9:45

Great scor­ing chance again for Zetter­berg, but Fleury stops him.  HUGE penalty kill for the Pens.

7:20

Guerin penal­ized for high stick­ing.   AHHH !!!  Guerin goes right to the box with no argu­ment.  If there’s blood it could be a 4 minute penalty.  It looked like Guerin was try­ing to lift someone’s stick and just missed, hit­ting the Wing’s player’s face—I think it was Draper, but its at the other end of the ice.

TV time­out

Two minute penalty called.  All the momen­tum is in Detroit’s favor.  If the Pens kill this penalty I have to believe they seize back the momentum.

Detroit Power Play #2

The atmos­phere in the build­ing in tense!  My stom­ach is in knots.

5:00

Penalty killed by Pens.  Guerin gets a chance with Crosby and Letang, but the shot is too sharp of an angle.  Crosby has been free only a few times tonight, but he’s play­ing great defense.  The same can be said for Malkin.  It’s almost as if Crosby and Malkin are play­ing like Zetter­berg and Dat­syuk defensively.

4:50

TV time­out. STYX “Rene­gade” play­ing “Oh momma I’m in fear for my life…”  Crowd is pumped.

Malkin’s mother still praying.

3:40

Malkin makes a great defen­sive play on Dat­syuk in the Pens’ end and rushes up the ice.  Malkin and Dat­syuk both cir­cled bat­tling with the puck on each other’s blades.  It was the equiv­a­lent to an arm wrestling match with Malkin pre­vail­ing.  Another exam­ple of Malkin’s defense tonight.

1:49

“Let’s Go Pens!” is heard as loud as ever.  Bush’s “Machine­head” get the crowd scream­ing even loader.

The Pens have a crit­i­cal face-off in the Wings end.  If Crosby can win the face-off it could allow the Pens to gen­er­ate some pres­sure in the Wings end and kill the clock

1:41

Crosby wins the face-off!  The puck drops back towards Orpik in the blue line.  Orpik attempts to dump it in, but a Wing (per­haps Hossa?) knocks it out of the air and send Cleary on a break­away.  My heart has skipped a beat.

Clear break away on Fleury com­ing right at me!

Fleury makes the save of the game!

If there was any ques­tion whether or not Fleury put Game 5 out of his mind, that save answered the question.

1:12

Time­out Detroit.

The arena is crazy with ten­sion and enthusiasm.

Malkin’s par­ents and the whole arena are on their feet!

Empty net for Detroit.

Crosby v. Zetter­berg for the face-off.

13.2 Sec­onds

Huge pileup in the Pens’ net.  Scud­eri pulls a “Zetter­berg” and makes at least two (maybe three) saves in his own net dur­ing the scramble.

(Side Note:  My friend Matt has been say­ing for weeks now that some team is going to offer Scud­eri a huge Orpik-sized con­tract when he becomes an unre­stricted free agent this sum­mer.  Scud­eri is cur­rently play­ing in the final year of his con­tract, which pays him $712,500.  Scuderi’s play on this shift has con­firmed that thought for me, much the same way Orpik’s mon­ster shift against the Wings in last year’s Final, (where he had 3 or 4 huge hits in about 15 sec­onds), earned him a 6 year $22.5 mil­lion con­tract.  Inci­den­tally, Orpik took less to stay in Pitts­burgh, despite the Rangers’ attempts to sign him for more).

Face-off in the Pens end.  Empty net for Detroit.  Crosby v. Zetter­berg on the face

off.  Pens get the puck and Tal­bot is able to gen­tly throw the puck up ice to end the game.

Blur’s “Song 2” blares as the crowd goes crazy!  Pens Win!  The final shot totals were 31 to 26 in favor of the Pens.  The Wings only looked alive once Draper scored.  The small con­tin­gent of Wings’ fans is notice­ably incred­u­lous.  They can’t believe the Wings didn’t clinch.

Wrapup

Game 7 will be a clas­sic.   I give a slight advan­tage to the Wings because of their home-ice match up advan­tage and the lively boards, which seem to give Fleury fits.  If Fleury plays solid and the Pens con­tinue with their strong defen­sive play and fore-check they could finally crack the Wings at the Joe.  All of the pres­sure will be on the Wings.

Go Pens!

Thanks Dave!  Game 7 will be fun.  Just a quick ques­tion if I may:

Jour­ney, AC/DC, GNR, Metal­lica, Styx and Bush?…is the Pen­guins’ game pre­sen­ta­tion guy aware there has been new music released in the last 15 years?  Reminds me of “old” Yan­kee Sta­dium where they lit­er­ally just played the same Jock Jams songs. Every. Sin­gle. Game.

Game 7 should be a clas­sic.  Enjoy!