Welcome Back Mr. Datsyuk

Though they won only two of them but the Pittsburgh Penguins looked to be the superior team over the first four games of the 2009 Stanley Cup finals.

Then Pavel Datsyuk returned to the Red Wings, the league's rightful most valuable player, got in the game.

The moment when the series shifted, when Detroit established itself as the team that would almost certainly win the Cup, came at 8:11 of the first period, Game Five, when the Russian star of the Red Wings cranked the Russian star of the Penguins, knocking him over and knocking Pittsburgh off its high horse.

The 5-feet, 11-inch, 200 pound Datsyuk nailed the the 6-foot, 3-inch Malkin, who had dominated the series until that moment, but stopped dominating for the rest of that game, at least.

Now the only thing to be determined is if the Wings can sustain that dominance back in Melon Arena on Tuesday? With Datsyuk back on the ice, the Wings will have a much different deck of cards to deal from & this should help Zetterberg contain the two headed beast of Malkin & Crosby. Game 6 is still very much up for grabs, this has been a home series, no one has stolen any wins away from the home team but fortunately for the Wings we don't have to.

Too bad the voting for the Hart trophy doesn't include the post season cause game 5 was proof positive of just how valuable Datsyuk is to the Red Wings & he deserves to win the MVP this year.

As for the Con Smyth for playoff MVP, if the wings win it which they will definitely win in the next two games but I would have to go with Osgood, Zetterberg a close second.

One thought occurred to me during game 5, if Hossa wasn't with us & he was still with the Pens, we would have been finished, with all these injuries we've been dealing with we wouldn't be able to contain those big 3 like we did last season. I only hope Hossa can score the winning goal when the wings win the cup, it would be great if he can hoist the cup in Pittsburgh though, if he thinks he gets booed now, wait till he lifts the cup.

The sweetest thing about winning on Tuesday will be that, we won't have to listen to the love fest of Pierre McGuire as he slobbers all over Cindy Crosby anymore. Hopefully next year another network gets the finals & Wing fans won't have to deal with biased, partial, prejudiced commentary.

Go Wings!!