Detroit-Pittsburgh Present Potential for a Great Series—Finally!

Every year around this time, the Stanley Cup finals arrive pitting the best of the Western Conference vs. the best of the Eastern Conference...er, huh?

That hasn't been the way it's turned out recently.

There has been a recent trend of the best teams in the West being upset by a young team of overachieving upstarts with a hot goaltender, storming through to the finals, where they are usually handled by the Eastern Conference, which is perceived to be generally weaker.

Before last year's Ducks won handily over the Ottawa Senators, the Cup finals saw a young, gritty Edmonton Oilers team (seeded eighth) take out the top-seeded Red Wings, before bowing to the Carolina Hurricanes.

2004 saw the Calgary Flames, another low-seeded team, take out the Wings en route to the finals, where they lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

And again in 2003, Babcock's upstart Ducks, on the back of hot goaltender JS Giguere, swept Detroit (noticing a trend here?) en route to the finals, where they lost to New Jersey.

This is the first year in what seems forever that we are truly getting the top teams from each conference to go head to head for the cup.

Detroit is the No. 1 overall seed, and before struggling to put away Dallas, had reeled off nine straight playoff wins, a franchise record.

Pittsburgh also showed total disregard for their lesser counterparts in the conference, and made the finals having lost only two games on the way there.

Pittsburgh unquestionably has the best offense in the NHL with superstars Sidney Crosby, Evengi Malkin, and Marian Hossa.

Crosby missed a good portion of the year with an injury, but is back to his old self now. Secondary scoring options like Ryan Malone, Jordan Staal, and Petr Sykora are nothing to shrug at either.

On defense, Pittsburgh has the veteran Sergei Gonchar and power play specialist, Ryan Whitney.

In goal, they have former No. 1 draft pick Marc-Andre Fluery, who has been playing like a Conn Smythe candidate thus far.

Detroit enters with arguably the top forward pair in the NHL not named Crosby/Malkin, with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.

Both are Selke trophy candidates as great defensive forwards (Datsyuk led the NHL in takeaways by a wide margin), and both are nearly 100-point players.

On defense, Detroit boasts the best top four D-men in the NHL in Norris trophy candidate Nick Lidstrom, former Devil Brian Rafalski, Nik Kronwall, who is making Detroiters think of Vladimir Konstantinov with his crushing hits, and deadline acquisition Brad Stuart.

They have a hell of a task ahead of them in shutting down Pittsburgh's top two lines.

In goal, Detroit has the ever dependable Chris Osgood, who is always either overrated by Detroit fans or severely underrated by the rest of hockey fans.

Fact is, he's been rock solid these playoffs without being overly spectacular. That's all Detroit needs.

On paper, we have two very talented, star-laden teams that can be called the best the NHL has to offer; however, one thing everyone seems to be forgetting is that these two teams still know nothing about each other.

Due to the wacky and now lame-duck NHL scheduling fiasco, Detroit and Pittsburgh have barely played each other over the past three years. So what does that mean?

It probably means we won't see fast-paced, all-out, reckless action, at least not at first. This will be a battle, a contest to see which team can figure out the other first. The team that does that will win the cup.

Expect game one to start out slowly while the two teams feel each other out and size one another up.

Overall, it should be a great series between two heavyweight contenders worthy of any hockey fan's viewership.

Just for fun, a supercomputer recently simulated the Wings/Pens series 10,000 times. The wings won 63 percent of the time, with the most common result being Wings in five.

May the best team win!