Red Wings win !

maybe it was not in 5 but 6 will do !congrats to the best hockey team ever!

Niyo: Red Wings bounce back to win title
They cure Game 5 ills with spirited effort, 11th championship

PITTSBURGH -- Call it delayed gratification.

But call them champions just the same.

The Red Wings boarded their team plane in the wee hours Thursday morning with a little extra carry-on luggage: The Stanley Cup.

Less than 48 hours after a stunning, triple-overtime loss at home in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Wings made amends Wednesday night at Mellon Arena, escaping with a 3-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins

And with that Game 6 triumph they staked claim to their fourth championship in 11 seasons -- and 11th title in franchise history.

....

"Nicklas Lidstrom, come get the Stanley Cup," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman bellowed at center ice, after the most coveted trophy in sports had been rolled out into full view. "It's yours to take back to Hockeytown."

Not a bad trip, after all.

"It's awesome," said Lidstrom, who became the first European-born, European-trained captain to hoist the Cup shortly before 11 p.m. "You can't describe it. It's a great feeling."

It was an uneasy feeling in the frantic final minutes -- few seconds, even -- Wednesday night. The Penguins, outplayed for most of the night, pulled to within a goal when they pulled their goalie and scored on the power play with 1:27 left in regulation.

Then, just before time expired, Chris Osgood fought off a shot by Penguins star Sidney Crosby and made a diving attempt at a save on the fluttering rebound. Marian Hossa took one final swipe and sent the puck skittering across the goal mouth, but it was not to be.

Time expired, Osgood got to his feet and threw his arms into the air, and moments later he was at the center of a celebratory mob of red and white.

"I was pretty happy when I looked up and saw the ref yell time," Osgood said, smiling wearily. "It was chaotic the last 40 seconds. Crosby was flying. They came at us. But, I mean, it's never easy."

The Wings clinched all four series this postseason on the road and still haven't finished a playoff round on home ice -- win or lose -- since the last time they hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2002.

No matter. The champagne never tastes bittersweet.

And skating around with that 38-pound silver trophy held aloft never gets old, either.

Lidstrom handed it to Dallas Drake, the oldest of the first-time Stanley Cup winners in the Wings dressing room -- "It was a little heavier than I thought," Drake said, laughing, "and it didn't help that my knees were shaking." -- and from there it was passed from smiling face to smiling face.

Another grizzled veteran, Chris Chelios, who was a healthy scratch the entire Finals, even put on his jersey and his skates and came out to take a spin with Lord Stanley for the third time in his career.

The Penguins were only the eighth team in NHL history to win a Game 5 on the road when facing a 3-1 series deficit in the Cup Finals. Four of the previous seven went on to force a Game 7, but the Wings avoided that climactic drama -- and collective anxiety it would've brought -- with an impressive, impassioned effort Wednesday.

The Game 5 loss "was devastating," Zetterberg admitted. "But we've been there before. And we just had a mind-set that, 'We're going to play a great game.' We had a great start, and then we kept going."

It was Zetterberg, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP, who set up the first goal of the night, falling to the ice as he sent a backhand pass to Brian Rafalski on the power play. Rafalski, the Dearborn native who returned home as the Red Wings' big free-agent signing last summer, waited and fired a wrist shot just wide of the net.

But as fate would have it, the shot deflected off defenseman Hal Gill past Marc-Andre Fleury, who was screened perfectly on the play by Tomas Holmstrom -- who else? -- barely five minutes after the opening faceoff.

The Wings were 13-1 this postseason when scoring the first goal. And after Monday's marathon affair in at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, the early lead meant a little something more on this night. The warm, humid weather in Pittsburgh turned the ice at Mellon Arena into a slushy mess Wednesday.

But while the Penguins appeared drained after staving off elimination in fifth-longest game in finals history, the Wings came out full of energy, just as their coach had predicted the day before.

"I liked our opportunity," Babcock said of the crushing Game 5 defeat, when the Cup was unpacked and then packed again in Detroit. "Let's do it again. Let's do it a little better."

Wednesday night, they did just that.

And wouldn't you know it? It felt the same as it ever did.

"It feels pretty good," Zetterberg said, smiling.

"It's been a long road."

But it was worth the trip.