Pens stuck in tough hole despite numerous chances

DETROIT -- Maybe the third time will be a charm. Like next year. If the Pittsburgh Penguins get a chance to stop the Detroit Red Wings from getting a three-peat.

The Penguins don't want to look that far ahead yet, which you can understand since they're only down 2-0 in this Stanley Cup Finals against Detroit after losing again by a 3-1 score. But they might as well start thinking longer term because even if this much-hyped Finals rematch seems to be close on the ice, it is over.

The Penguins are done. Kaput. Fini. They are not going to beat the Red Wings four times in five games. No matter how banged up Detroit is supposed to be. Not after Pittsburgh played well enough on the road for the second night in a row to win against most NHL teams, yet still found a way to lose.

That's what happens against the Detroit Red Wings at playoff time. Pittsburgh learned a few things from its loss in the opener. The Penguins got pucks deep, forced the Detroit defenders to turn and retreat and created a number of good scoring chances as a result. And if that weren't enough, the Red Wings were outshot, lost the majority of the faceoffs and had nearly twice as many turnovers as the Penguins. Detroit was even trailing after the first period, a situation it had not recovered from previously in these playoffs.

"Well, we've actually gotten the breaks so far," Red Wings defenseman Brian Rafalski admitted.

True, but Detroit has taken advantage of its chances while the Penguins haven't, so now the Red Wings head back to Pittsburgh with the kind of series lead that has been blown by only one team in 32 previous tries.

And the Red Wings are mad, too. If you thought this sleeping giant had awoken heading into the second period, which Detroit dominated, consider the ugly end to the game that saw Pittsburgh's Maxime Talbot spear Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood with 19 seconds left.

• Stanley Cup Finals: Wings take Game 2 | Series: DET 2, PIT 0

Down or not, the Penguins are lucky not to lose star Evgeni Malkin for Game 3. (AP)

"I just said I was going for the puck, the puck," snapped Talbot after questioned several times about how that was possible since he hit Osgood in the chest.

But it didn't stop there because Evgeni Malkin ended up taking on Henrik Zetterberg and getting an instigator penalty to go along with a misconduct. The instigator in the last five minutes of a game carries an automatic one-game suspension with it, but the ban was rescinded quickly following the game under the NHL's "can't have our big names kept out of games policy."

"Suspensions are applied under this rule when a team attempts to send a message in the last five minutes by having a player instigate a fight [or] when a player seeks retribution for a prior incident. Neither was the case here," league disciplinarian Colin Campbell said in a statement.

So the Penguins won't lose the only player who scored a goal for them. The thing is Malkin didn't really put the puck in the net in the first period -- Detroit defenseman Brad Stuart actually knocked it in during a goal mouth scramble. But after a bad start to the game, it gave Pittsburgh a lead, and something to build on.

"We had a good start the first 10 minutes I thought we were really skating, but Pittsburgh took over the last 10," Daniel Cleary said. "In the second though, we had good focus."

Enough focus to take the game away and it started with a goal by Jonathan Ericsson that was eerily similar to a crucial goal by Detroit in Game 1. Johan Franzen put the Red Wings ahead to stay in the opener after Detroit won a draw deep in Pittsburgh's end after the Penguins iced the puck and were prevented from changing to fresh players.

In that instance, Pittsburgh coach Dan Bylsma used his only allotted time out, but the move backfired. In Game 2, the Red Wings forced another icing, and Bylsma elected not to call a timeout, but Darren Helm won the draw cleanly back to Ericsson, who blew a shot past a screened Marc Andre Fleury.

Six minutes later, Detroit caught a break when Marian Hossa was penalized for slashing Pascal Dupuis' stick, and before the play was over Valterri Filppula picked up a rebound and backhanded it over a sprawled Fleury to give the Red Wings the lead they took into the second intermission.

Detroit hasn't blown a lead after two periods in this postseason, so that was a bad sign for the Penguins. Worse was when rookie Justin Abdelkader scored for the second time in as many nights early in the third period to put the game, and maybe the series away.

"We've played pretty well, but we were never fooling ourselves it was going to be easy," said Penguins forward Bill Guerin, who had two of the three hit goal posts by Pittsburgh. "They have lot of talent, depth and great goaltending, so we just have to remain confident and take the positives out of this.

"We're getting the chances, hopefully we'll start burying them."

More likely, they've buried themselves.