Penguins win type of game that dreams are made of

DETROIT -- This was the game that all players hope to be a part of at some point in their careers, but few actually do. The one that means more than any other possibly can, that lifetime memories are made of.

Everyone that reaches this level has dreamed about it a million times growing up as kids, playing it out in their driveways and their basements and it would always have the same happy ending. Yet somehow it turned out to be better in real life, following a storyline that seemed to come straight from Hollywood with the Pittsburgh Penguins rebounding from a heartbreaking defeat at home in the Stanley Cup Finals a year ago, and exacting revenge by turning the tables on the Detroit Red Wings.

In essence, this was everything a deciding Stanley Cup Finals game should be and everything the NHL could have hoped for with a national network audience on a primetime viewing night and no Kobe to compete with. It was the league's two best teams going back and forth for 60 minutes with adrenaline fueled reckless abandon, each finding themselves alternately on the edge of heartbreak and rapture before it ended.

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Really it couldn't have been scripted any better from the way it began to the nail-biting finish. And certainly not with the way these resilient young Penguins handled the starring role, overcoming the long odds of winning a Game 7 on the road after dropping the first two games of the series, the loss of captain Sidney Crosby for all but one shift after the middle of the second period, the effective shutdown of eventual Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin and most importantly the experience of a veteran-laden champion that did not seem ready to pass along the torch.

'This is how you win championships,' Maxime Talbot says about the Pens' resilience. (Getty Images)

"We had all the respect in the world for Detroit, but we thought we played really well here the first couple of games and just didn't get the results so we never lost our confidence in ourselves," said defenseman Brooks Orpik, who had a team-leading nine hits and five blocked shots. "We did it before when we went down 2-0 to Washington and won Game 7 on the road. That was huge so we knew we could do it again."

• Recap: Penguins 2, Red Wings 1

And all it took was a near-perfect road game that featured a remarkable demonstration of body sacrificing team to the tune of 44 hits and 20 blocked shots, a two-goal night for the ages from role player Maxime Talbot and some early and more important some late survival skills for Pittsburgh to come away with the 2-1 victory that clinched the organization's first Stanley Cup in 17 years.

"I don't have an explanation why Max can come up big in tough situations or big games, but he's done it enough to know that's what he can do," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. "He's gritty, he's determined and he's not afraid to go after it. We said before the playoffs if your team plays well enough as a team, everyone has a chance to put the [Superman] cape on and certainly Max put it on tonight."

Otherwise it would have gone to Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who may not have been overworked on this night, but was severely tested enough to be forced into being a difference maker both in the first period when the Red Wings came flying out of the gate, and late in the third period when the home team put on its last desperate push. He faced only 24 shots, but kept Detroit off the scoreboard until Jonathan Ericsson's shot deflected past him with about six minutes left and then shut the door, with his best stop coming in the dying seconds when he drove across the crease to turn back Nicklas Lidstrom's last gasp effort.

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"We had a couple of chances in the last couple of seconds, but they played real well defending themselves all night from the red line in, almost five guys collapsing and clearing our forwards out to take away shooting lanes," Lidstrom said. "We didn't have that second guy going there or stopping in front of net to be there for rebounds, but the margin between having success and losing is small, and we had a couple of mistakes."

Both of them came in the second period and victimized Red Wings defenseman Brad Stuart. On the opening goal a minute into the period, Stuart made a bad outlet pass from behind his net that deflected off Malkin's skate right to Talbot who quickly fired it past Chris Osgood. Ten minutes later, Stuart tried to pinch at the Pittsburgh blue line and lost the puck, sending Talbot away on a two-on-one that he converted by firing high over Osgood's glove shoulder.

"I still have bad hands, those two goals don't improve my stick handling skills," laughed Talbot. "But I don't really care about those two goals. Everybody's talking to me about that, but what matters is that we won the game. [Fleury] made some great saves, [Malkin] won the Conn Smythe, everybody sacrificed their body, this is how you win championships."

And live out dreams.