Thanks to a 2-1 victory in overtime against the Blackhawks on Wednesday night, the Red Wings have set up a rematch with the Penguins in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Detroit won the Western Conference finals 4-1. The Red Wings and Penguins, coming off a four-game sweep over Carolina in the East, will open the championship series Saturday night in Detroit.
The series will start nearly a week ahead of schedule because NBC and the NHL didn’t want a long layoff to stunt the excitement about the matchup.
I think plenty of casual hockey fans wanted to see some new blood in the Finals, but it’s hard to beat a matchup between Sidney Crosby and the red hot Penguins vs. the defending champs. This will also be the first rematch of the Stanley Cup finals since the Islanders and Oilers battled each other in back to back years in 1983 and 1984.
The 21-year old Crosby draws a lot of comparisons to the “Great One” Wayne Gretzky and legend Mario Lemieux, but even he’ll admit that until he wins a cup, people will always question the legitimacy of those comparisons. A Cup victory over the powerful Wings would go a long way in helping Sid Kid gain even more backers.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Wings get Nicklas Lindstrom and Pavel Datsyuk back on Saturday. Both players were scratched from Wednesday night’s game after expecting to play. Hopefully Detroit will be at full strength come Saturday, because this series should be a battle.
