Lee Diekemper recaps the final game of the NHL season.

Detroit 3, Pittsburgh 2: Not always does the best team in the regular season find itself the last one standing. That wasn’t the case this spring. Your Detroit Red Wings are the Stanley Cup champions. Again. For the fourth time in 11 years, the Red Wings held the sport’s most cherished hardware aloft in victory.

The word “dynasty” has been thrown around far too frequently in sports in the early years of the 21st Century. Free agency pretty much prevents any team from winning multiple consecutive championships. The 2008 Stanley Cup champions are not a dynasty.

What the Red Wings have done over the past decade is impressive, akin to what the Spurs have accomplished in the NBA and the Patriots in the NFL. Unlike the Patriots, it doesn’t appear the Wings needed any clandestine electronic surveillance to gain an edge; good old fashioned defense does the trick.

Facing the NHL’s current offensive juggernaut, not once in the Finals did the Wings crumble under pressure as so many Pens’ opponents in the playoffs had. In the Wings two losses in the Finals, it appeared as if the Pens were about to blow the game open early, but Detroit gathered itself and got back into the game.

Even though the Wings are much older than the Pens, the marathon on ice Monday night didn’t zap them of energy in game six as many suspected. Part of the reason this didn’t happen was the superior depth the Wings have.

penguinscameclose

Unlike the first two games in the Igloo, the Wings jumped on top first last night. Fate seemed to favor the Wings when Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who didn’t play nearly as well as he did in overtime Monday, fell backwards after initially stopping Henrik Zetterberg’s shot midway through the third, pushing the puck into the goal. It proved fatal for the Pens.

The Pens did rally late, making it “interesting” for Wings goalie Chris Osgood, nearly capping the comeback by sending the game into overtime in the final second.

After Marian Hossa pulled the Pens within a goal with roughly 90 seconds left on a power play goal, he came within inches of tying the game at the horn. He had a swipe at the puck off a Sidney Crosby backhand that seemed to hang forever on the right post behind Osgood. Hossa’s swing at the puck scooted parallel with the goal line, scant inches away as time ran out.

(Consolation for Pittsburgh people: Steelers training camp begins in about seven weeks.)

The Stanley Cup now resides in Hockeytown. Again. And for the NHL, which no longer is just for Canadians, that’s not a bad thing.