Just when everyone thought this series was all but wrapped up for the Detroit Red Wings, the Penguins had to go and make things interesting. In their first game of the series at home, the Penguins took charge and acted for the first time in this series like they deserved to be here.
The Pens opened the scoring early with a goal from Max Talbot. Off a broken play in the Detroit zone, Kris Letang broke up a clearing attempt and dished it to Malkin, who fed it to the slot where Talbot was waiting. Without stopping the pass, Talbot one-timed it past Osgood to put the Pens up by 1. Detroit was quick to answer, however, with Zetterberg and Franzen both scoring 5 minutes apart to put the Wings up 2-1. Fortunately for Pittsburgh, Despite having six men on the ice for nearly half a minute, they were not victimized by the officials, and ended up drawing a powerplay of their own late in the first. Again, Malkin and Letang were instrumental in drawing the Pens even, as Malkin fed Letang at the point, and watched him put a seeing-eye shot on net that somehow beat Osgood.
In the second, both teams played tight defense and physical hockey, carrying the same score to the 3rd, where the Pens were finally able to close out a game in this series. Sergei Gonchar scored a beautiful powerplay goal at the midpoint of the period, ripping a slap shot through a thick screen of bodies and putting Pittsburgh up for good. Talbot would add his second goal of the game with an empty netter in the last minute of the game.
While many fans will point to the fact that Pittsburgh got away with a blatant too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty in the first period, as well as the weak call on Jonathan Ericsson that led to the Gonchar goal, the real story in this game was Marc-Andre Fleury. Fleury stopped 27 of 29 shots in this one, and really outplayed Osgood through the first two periods, in which the Penguins were outshot 26-11. If Fleury can continue to play as well as he did in this one, we could be in for a real nail biter of a series.