The Detroit Red Wings have shut down the scoring punch of the young Pittsburgh Penguins in the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals. The Penguins were held to just 41 shots in the two games, and Chris Osgood has back-to-back shutouts to improve to 12-2 since taking over for Dominik Hasek in Game 4 of Detroit’s first-round matchup with Nashville.

Osgood, who has a 1.38 GAA and .939 save percentage in 15 postseason games, is the fourth goaltender in NHL history to post consecutive shutouts in Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup finals. The 35-year-old veteran is the first since New Jersey's Martin Brodeur turned in a pair of 3-0 home victories over Anaheim to start the 2003 finals.

Consecutive Shutouts to Open a Stanley Cup Finals

1926 Clint Benedict (Montreal Maroons). . . . . . . . . .vs. Victoria Cougars
1945 Frank McCool (Toronto Maple Leafs). . . . . . . . .vs. Detroit Red Wings
2003 Martin Brodeur (New Jersey Devils). . . . . . . . . vs. Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
2008 Chris Osgood (Detroit Red Wings). . . . . . . . . . .vs. Pittsburgh Penguins

Clint Benedict, a Hall of Fame goaltender, was one of the earliest stars among the league’s netminders. In leading the Montreal Maroons to the Stanley Cup championship in 1926, Benedict blanked the Victoria Cougars three times in four games -- including the first two contests. When the Maroons secured the Cup in the fourth game, Benedict became the first NHL goalie to win titles with two different teams. He also won with the Ottawa Senators in 1920, ’21 and ’23.

Benedict also may be the first NHL goaltender to wear a mask. After taking a shot to the face in February 1930, he donned a leather mask with an oversized nose and some padding around the mouth and forehead. He didn’t stick with it, though, and his career ended a short time later after taking a shot to the throat.

With Hall of Fame goalie Turk Broda serving in the military, Toronto rookie Frank McCool set a record of 193 scoreless minutes in the 1945 Stanley Cup finals. He blanked Detroit by scores of 1-0, 2-0 and 1-0, but the Red Wings came roaring back to win the next three games. Toronto won Game 7, 4-3, as McCool finished with four playoff shutouts in 13 games to complete one of the finest rookie seasons in NHL history.

Nicknamed “Ulcers” for his nervous manner, McCool held out the following year. He played in just 22 games before Broda returned from military duty, and McCool never played in the NHL again.

In 2003, future Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur shut out Anaheim by identical 3-0 scores in Games 1 and 2 of the finals. The Ducks roared back to win the next two games at home, making it a best-of-three series. Despite being held scoreless in the first two contests, the Ducks pushed the series to seven games, but Brodeur stopped 24 shots for another 3-0 win and his third shutout of the series in Game 7.

So, Benedict, McCool and Brodeur all recorded a third shutout en route to winning the Cup. Osgood has at least two cracks at matching the others, but he’s probably more interested in following the path of the 31 teams that have won the first two games of the finals at home. Thirty have captured the Cup.

The next step for Osgood and the Red Wings is to beat Pittsburgh at home, where the Penguins haven’t lost a game since Feb. 24. Going into Wednesday night’s Game 3, the Pens have won 16 straight at Mellon Arena.

Posted by Thom Henninger at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Undoubtedly, any hockey fan who treats his NHL statistics seriously has debated the question whether regular-season numbers mean a thing when two teams hook up in a postseason series.

The Western Conference finals matchup between Detroit and Dallas, which kicks off Thursday night, presents a high-profile test of that question.

Heading into Game 1, Stars goalie Marty Turco has won just twice in 18 career appearances against the Red Wings -- all in the regular season. He has an .897 save percentage facing the Wings, and a .914 mark in all other games over his seven seasons. Although Turco made 28 saves and blanked Detroit, 1-0, on Feb. 18, he has allowed four goals to the Wings in three of his last five games against them. Oh yeah: he’s 0-7-2 all time at Joe Louis Arena, where Game 1 will be played.

On the other hand, Turco has been terrific this postseason. He stopped 61 of 62 shots in Dallas’ 2-1, four-overtime victory over San Jose in the series clincher. Four of the six games with the Sharks required overtime, and Turco stopped 34 of 35 shots in sudden-death action. He ditched the reputation as a poor postseason performer a year ago, and he faces Detroit with a 1.56 GAA and .938 save percentage in his last 18 playoff appearances, dating to April 2007.

The sample size to make any kind of definitive statement about regular-season numbers or Turco’s performance against Detroit is far too small, of course, but it will be interesting to see if he can shut down Detroit’s scorers after handling the Sharks and Stanley Cup champion Ducks.

The goalie who will be on the other end of the ice has been every bit as good as Turco since taking over for Dominik Hasek in Game 4 of Detroit’s opening-round series with Nashville. Chris Osgood is 6-0 since assuming starting duties, and his 1.52 GAA ranks first among playoff goaltenders.

Osgood has a chance to lead the Red Wings to the Stanley Cup championship 10 years after he was the man in net for the 1998 team that claimed the second of two titles in a row for Detroit under Scotty Bowman. The postseason numbers back up the obvious. Osgood is a much better performer this spring than he was a decade ago, when he allowed soft center-ice goals by Phoenix's Jeremy Roenick, St. Louis' Al MacInnis and Dallas' Jamie Langenbrunner.

The other holdovers from the 1998 Wings are Nicklas Lidstrom, Tomas Holmstrom, Darren McCarty, Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby. They’ve been through the lows of early-round exits from the playoffs in 2003, 2004 and 2006, when the dominant Red Wings were upset as the West’s No. 1 or 2 seed.

Plenty of Red Wings have come and gone over the last decade. The mainstays are inching closer to 40th birthdays -- and then there’s 46-year-old Chris Chelios -- but the geezers still get the job done. It’s easy to think of Detroit as an old team, but that’s not the whole picture.

Nearly half of the Wings’ 2007-08 goals, 121 of 252, were scored by four players in their prime: Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Johan Franzen and Daniel Cleary. The 27-year-old Zetterberg led the Wings with 43 goals during the regular season. Datsyuk, 29, collected a team-high 97 points. It’s the 28-year-old Franzen, though, who tops the team with 11 goals and 14 points in 10 playoff games this spring.

Detroit’s 1998 championship run passed through Dallas, as the Red Wings took a six-game Western Conference finals from the Stars. That’s the last time Dallas and Detroit have met in the postseason, and Osgood blanked the Stars, 2-0, in the series clincher.

Though the two teams didn’t meet in the playoffs the following season, it was the Stars who dethroned the Wings by winning the franchise’s only Stanley Cup in 1999. This Wings-Stars matchup moves the winner one step closer to regaining the Cup.

Posted by Thom Henninger at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Eastern Conference finals will be a Pennsylvania showdown between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, two of the six expansion clubs to join the league in 1967. They have been rivals for decades, but the young Penguins and rebuilt Flyers don’t have all that much history.

Or do they?

According to AP Sports Writer Alan Robinson, what history they do share coaxed Pens star Evgeni Malkin to say some less-than-complimentary things about his team’s third-round opponent.

In an entertaining look at the history between the two franchises on Monday, Robinson mentioned a few recent incidents that have sparked budding enmity between this spring’s Eastern Conference finalists. Malkin hasn’t forgotten an 8-2 loss in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, when the Flyers bullied the Penguins and knocked them off their game. Flyers fans showered the Pittsburgh bench with popcorn before it was over.

Then there’s the matter of Malkin being cut on the left cheek by the skate of the Flyers’ Mike Richards on March 16. In the teams’ next meeting on April 2, they began fighting less than a minute into Pittsburgh’s 4-2 win, a heated, rough-and-tumble victory that secured the Penguins’ first division crown since 1997-98.

If Philadelphia gained some revenge in the season finale four days later, when a 2-0 victory cost the Penguins the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, a number of Flyers were grumbling. The Penguins rested Sidney Crosby and played a disinterested game.

"Maybe they're scared of us, I don't know," Flyers center Jeff Carter said after the game. "I'm not really into throwing games for matchups in the playoffs. You play to win and you never want to lose a game." By losing their finale, the Penguins faced Ottawa instead of Boston in the first round, and they swept a Senators club that had lost 10 of its final 12 games when the series was over.

It will be Biron in net for sixth-seeded Philadelphia, Marc-Andre Fleury for the No. 2 seed Penguins. Fleury is 8-1 in the postseason and ranks first among the four conference finals starters with a .938 save percentage.

No one has faced more postseason shots than Biron (395 -- an average of 32.9 a game). After allowing four goals in Philadelphia’s Game 1 loss to Montreal in the Eastern Conference semifinals, he posted a .930 save percentage and stopped 133 of 143 shots in four consecutive wins over the Habs.

Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have a long history. For years, it was the Flyers manhandling the Penguins in their 1970s heyday, when Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, Bill Barber and Bill Clement anchored talented Philadelphia teams. And the Flyers have won the last three playoff matchups -- in 1989, 1997 and 2000, overcoming a five-goal, eight-point game by Mario Lemieux (1989) and a five-overtime game in Pittsburgh (2000).

This is a great Pittsburgh team, but the Penguins face a key rival that has already knocked off two of the East’s top three seeds going into the conference finals in Pittsburgh Friday night.

Believe it or not, this is the first time the Flyers and Penguins have met in the conference finals. With the juices flowing in the last few games between them, hockey fans may be in for a memorable series.

Posted by Thom Henninger at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)