ESPN 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs Blog

Posted by Scott Burnside and Pierre LeBrun

DETROIT -- Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is one of the NHL's heavyweights in the coaching fraternity, not only for his on-the-ice performance but also for his savvy off it.

He knows how to use the media to his advantage, and it's no coincidence that for the second straight day, he poked Sidney Crosby yet again with a head-hunting charge.

"To me, the battle they had going last night between [Henrik] Zetterberg and Crosby was a great battle, I thought," Babcock said Sunday morning. "I thought he went head-hunting right off the hop. His ability to respond was good. I think that's a game within the game. If you're a hockey purist and you like superstars who bring it, that's a nice matchup."

So it was a shot wrapped in a compliment, I guess.

Babcock made a similar statement Saturday night after his team's 3-1 win over the Penguins.

"Crosby, to me, looked very, very determined tonight," Babcock said after Game 1. "Last time we played them, it took them a couple of games to get going, but they were very competitive tonight. Crosby went head-hunting for Zetterberg in the neutral zone once and then got him with a good crosscheck -- that's just being competitive, and they're high-end players, and we have to compete back."

Huh? Crosby a headhunter? That's just Babcock trying to get into the head of No. 87. Been going on for 100 years of hockey.

"I'm not going to get involved with the games," Crosby said Sunday morning after being asked about Babcock's comments. "He can say whatever he wants. I don't think I've been known as a headhunter throughout my career. He's the first one ever to say that, so it's pretty interesting stuff."

Zetterberg called it "a good hit" on Sunday.

"It's a pretty good one," Pittsburgh coach Dan Bylsma said Sunday of the matchup. "Two talented players. I thought both battled extremely hard. You know, they butted heads a couple times last night just in the middle of the ice, at the net, a couple confrontations. It was, you know, it was toe-to-toe, and they'll get to do it again tonight, I'm sure."

Crosby also had to answer for his postgame brush with Wings veteran Kirk Maltby. It's a stretch even to call it a slash, but you clearly can see the Pens star tap Maltby on the skate in the game video.

On a scale of 1 to 10, Kirk, where do you rank that slash?

"It was pretty low," Maltby said Sunday. "Under five, like a three, maybe. It didn't hurt. We were kind of in a train, going to see Ozzie [in] congratulations, I was right behind Homer, and I thought that's who was going to get it. It's just the fact that he did it. Maybe it would have been different if the roles had been reversed."

Said Crosby, "He was just talking, and I just slashed him. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary that's never happened before."

Crosby said Saturday night he was tired of Maltby running his mouth off.

"Part of the process of a series is you try to get under another team's skin, wear 'em down and make it as hard as you possibly can," Maltby said. "That's all I did, was trying to do and will continue to do. Trust me, there's a lot coming back from their guys, as well. You try and get every little edge you can."

Let's drop the puck!
-- Pierre LeBrun

Injury updates
Kris Draper (groin) skated Sunday morning at the Wings' optional practice, but Pavel Datsyuk (foot) did not.

Babcock said neither would play Sunday night. Makes you wonder whether Datsyuk has regressed, but Babcock denied that Sunday.

"No, I think it's the same," he said. "They did a ton of work on him yesterday. My son said to me after the game, 'Dad, Pav can hardly walk.' I said, 'Yeah, but if you worked out as hard as he does all day long to try to get back, you could hardly walk, either.' So let's not read into that. He was limping coming out of the building last night. So there's no chance for him today."
-- Pierre LeBrun

Must-win for Pens?
Last season, the Penguins were down 2-0 against Detroit in the Cup finals and never got back to even terms with the Wings. Earlier this postseason, they erased a 2-0 series deficit against Washington and won four of five to advance to the Eastern Conference finals.

So, does Game 2 on Sunday constitute a must-win or just another game?

"Well, you can go into this game tonight saying it's a must-win, but it's not the focus your team needs to have to have success," Bylsma said. "We're certainly looking to come into tonight's game and win it; but, more importantly, is how we play it and how the game plays out. We want to dictate. We want to play at our pace and get to the offensive zone. If we can do that, then we'll take the outcome.

"If we can put the Red Wings back, if we can force them to play defense more, if we can play in the offensive zone more, then we'll take the outcome, and that's what the plan is when you play a seven-game series.

"The last thing I'll say is not [that] we have to win this game. That's not the right focus for our team."
-- Scott Burnside

Remember Lilja
Andreas Lilja hasn't played a game since Feb. 28, when he suffered a concussion in a fight with Nashville's Shea Weber, but he tried to play last week.

The Swedish blueliner revealed to ESPN.com on Sunday morning that he pushed his luck with the Wings when both Nicklas Lidstrom and Jonathan Ericsson went down, leaving the team thin on defense for Game 5 of the Western Conference finals.

"I called the doctor right away when those guys were not going to play and I said, 'Any way I can play?' And he said, 'There's no way you can play,'" Lilja said. "Obviously, I wanted to help out. It's really, really frustrating to sit and watch the games, but it helps a lot when the team is playing good and winning. Because if they were losing, I'd be even more frustrated, because I would think I needed to contribute to help us win."

Lilja skated again Sunday morning, but he's no closer to a return.

"I've been skating for the last couple of weeks. Except for my head, I feel great," he said. "I still got headaches, so obviously I'm not ready to play."

It's beginning to look as though his next game will be next season unless there's a surprising recovery.

"I'm starting to figure out that maybe it's too late," he said. "We'll see what happens, but I'm probably going to aim for next season."

Babcock said people forget about his loss to the Wings. "Lilja's an important player on this team," the coach said.
-- Pierre LeBrun

The wonder rookie
It's the playoffs, so everyone is playing with something.

All except Detroit defenseman Jonathan Ericsson, who is playing without something -- his appendix, which was removed during emergency surgery last week.

He was back in action, however, in Game 1 and logged 16 minutes, 47 seconds in ice time and was plus-1 in the Wings' series-opening 3-1 victory. Sunday morning, he talked about getting some rest and being ready for Game 2 on Sunday night.

"A lot of rest here. Just prepare myself and I'll be ready for tonight," he said.

The 6-foot-5 rookie was asked whether he would take shots to numb the area around his incision to reduce the pain.

"We're probably going to do that just to make sure I can play my game 100 percent," he said. "I didn't play with any local shots in the warm-up, and I just felt it would be better if I did, so it helped my game a little bit."

The 25-year-old said he felt more comfortable as the game went along.

"I felt better and better as the game went on actually," he said. "So, I'm positive about tonight's game that it's probably going to feel the same way."

Babcock had high praise for Ericsson, one of three rookies who were in the lineup in Game 1.

"He's a real good player, he's got the long reach," Babcock said. "He's got the ability to get his hands out and get you on his back and make that good pass to get you going with speed. He's a guy who is going to be, I think, an elite player in the league for a long time."

Like rookies Justin Abdelkader, who scored the insurance goal in Game 1, and Ville Leino, Ericsson simply hasn't had the opportunity to show his wares given the Wings' depth and salary-cap issues.

"They've come in and done a great job," Babcock said.

With Lilja out, Ericsson has "come in and basically saved us, or we would have been in trouble without him," the coach said.

Do Ericsson's friends and family think he is crazy to be back on the ice so soon after having surgery?

"Yeah, some people think it's crazy, but when you see what the doctors are doing, what kind of job they're doing, it's not that strange or weird," he said. "I'm just happy I had the doctor I had for the surgery and the team doctors we have here."
-- Scott Burnside

Shift from hell
One of the defining moments in Game 1 was the shift from hell for the Pittsburgh defensive duo of Hal Gill and Rob Scuderi, who ended up being on the ice for about two minutes at the end of the second period. Even though Bylsma called a timeout, the Wings ended up scoring what proved to be the winning goal with less than a minute to go.

"As a player, you can sense when the other team can't get off the ice, especially defensemen in the second period. It's a long change, and it's a tough change," Scuderi said Sunday.

"There's no doubt that they sensed it, because every time we got the puck into the neutral zone, they did a quick-up, they didn't waste any time, they came straight back at us, which is a smart play by their defensemen," Scuderi added. "When we're in our neutral zone, we feel the same way. If you know the other team's been out there for a long time, you try to capitalize."

Not only was the shift long -- probably three times longer than most normal shifts -- it was also a hard-skating shift.

"It was a solid 30 to 40 seconds in our zone, then we got into the neutral zone, then we came back in and did another 30 to 40 seconds in our D zone, and that's hard ice time. You're not just cruising around," Scuderi said. "We got the timeout, but you're still out there for two minutes. There's really nothing that you can do. It's unfortunate that it happened to us, but hopefully we can learn from it and get some good deep dumps and get some good changes."

Despite the loss, Scuderi said the mood in the Penguins' dressing room is markedly different from last season, when the Red Wings dominated all aspects of Game 1.

"Last year, I think at the end of the game, we thought, 'What the hell was that?' And we kind of got ran out of there kind of lopsidedly."

As for netminder Marc-Andre Fleury, who did not have his sharpest game, Scuderi said the goaltender's teammates aren't concerned.

"Marc-Andre's been solid all year, and he's harder on himself than anyone ever could be, so I'm sure he'll be ready for tonight, and hopefully he doesn't let that get in his head and he just plays another solid game for us," Scuderi said.