The Detroit Red Wings are on the brink of bringing back the Cup.
Sparked by playing at home with one of their top players making his series debut, the Wings put the franchise on the brink of a second consecutive NHL championship with a 5-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals Saturday night.
The win at Joe Louis Arena gave the Wings a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series and they can capture the 12th Stanley Cup in team history with a win in Game 6 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night.
Detroit was buoyed by the return of NHL most valuable player nominee Pavel Datsyuk, who had missed the Wings’ previous seven games with a foot injury. Datsyuk made an immediate impact with two assists and strong defense that helped shut down Pittsburgh stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, who had combined for 10 points in the first four games.
In addition to Datsyuk’s contributions, Henrik Zetterberg and Brian Rafalski each had a goal and assist while Dan Cleary, Valtteri Filppula and Niklas Kronwall also scored.
“That was probably one of our better, more complete games start to finish,” Cleary said. “We played hard in each area. We were disciplined and capitalized. The power play was great, [goalie Chris] Osgood was good when he had to be. It was probably one of our best games, but we’ve got to play even better on Tuesday.”
The Wings rode the wave of a four-goal, second-period outburst to help Osgood (22 saves) record the win with his 15th career postseason shutout.
Cleary put the Wings on top 1-0 with the lone first-period goal. Datsyuk carried the puck into the Penguins’ zone and flipped a back-handed pass to his teammate at the top of the right circle and the veteran winger snapped a shot that beat Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to the glove side.
The goal came six minutes after Detroit’s penalty killers, who had come under fire for allowing four power-play goals in Pittsburgh’s first nine attempts, held the Penguins without a shot with a man advantage after Kronwall was sent off for tripping Chris Kunitz.
“After we killed the first power play we were able to take the game to them,” Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said. “We were able to hang on to the puck down low and I thought we were coming wave after wave, not relying on one or two lines. We had four lines that played real well.”
The Wings took a 2-0 lead early in the second period on a goal by Filppula. Seconds after the Penguins killed a Detroit power play, Osgood took advantage of a line change to find an open Marian Hossa and sent a long pass to the winger at the Pittsburgh blue line. Hossa found his teammate streaking between the circles with a pass and Filppula flipped the puck past Fleury with a backhander. Osgood earned an assist on the play as a result of his pass.
Another Penguins penalty played a part in the Wings taking a 3-0 lead. After Sergei Gonchar snapped Datsyuk’s stick to draw a slashing call, Kronwall carried the puck from behind the Pittsburgh goal, skated hard to the net and beat Fleury from in close.
Just over two minutes later Rafalski scored another power-play goal to make it 4-0 and the rout was on.
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ckuc@tribune.com
Read more on the finals
Check out Helene Elliott’s take on Game 5 and the series at chicagotribune.com/sports
