GRIT BEATS SKILL AS THE PENS WIN THE CUP !

The Pittsburgh Penguins gritty performance proved the most skilled team doesn’t always win in the end.

It’s the team with the most will to compete and block shots, drive the net and basically do whatever it takes to win.

Friday night in Detroit at the “Joe” the Pens did what almost no one outside of them and their fan base thought, beat the Wings in their own building to take the Cup.

I’m happy to say that Hockey God predicted a Pens win at the start in this series but even I thought it would be difficult if the series went seven as this WAS very much a home and home series with the home team winning every game except the most critical one last night.

Pittsburgh did out play the Wings for most of the night for a very deserving victory but there were some moments where M-A Fleury had to come up big against the Wings skill.

I for one love the fact that Grit beat Skill last night as I believe that a team should be built with your top 6 skill guys combined with your gritty plumbers spread out across the balance of the forward lines. Same thing on D combine skill with grit with the willingness to sacrifice your body game in and game out.

Detroit is a very well coached hockey club and is full of skill but in my mind outside of Daniel Cleary they don’t have the grit in their line-up that they have had years ago.

Long gone are the Stevie Y’s, Brendan Shanahan’s and long in the tooth are the Kris Drapers and Darran McCarty who were around for the Wings big Cup wins previous. The Wings are trying to get back to that with guys like the youngster Darren Helm who has more than proven that he should be an everyday player next season.

In the end the Wings are so over skilled and talented but the Wings management may want to go about adding some muscle like most other teams do in today’s NHL because in the end they lost and that’s the reason why.

Pens Sidney Crosby is the youngest captain ever to lift the Cup and did it on a bad knee as he was hurt in game seven but it didn’t seem to bother him when he took the Cup the first time around the ice. For me that was great to see because he takes so much abuse from the genius media about his play to which most of them know nothing about.

Crosby and Mike Babcock had an interesting exchange at the end of the handshakes where Babcock said “you played great” with the two of them to be guaranteed to be joining forces later this summer for Canada’s Olympic team camp in August.

But today the very young Pens are Stanley Cup Champions and that sounds great !

For Hockey God I’m Dave Frost

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 8:23 am and is filed under Frost on Ice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.