Everybody seems to think that all the momentum in the series has shifted towards the Pittsburgh Penguins. I don't necessarily see it that way.
Is Pittsburgh excited that they lived to fight another day in Game 5? Absolutely; but do the Detroit Red Wings have to do a lot of navel gazing and say 'Boy oh boy are we ever in trouble.' I don't think so.
If the two teams were to play Game 5 five times over, four of the five times that game goes in Detroit's favour. I think that if you are the Wings you want to look at it as if the Penguins want to win the Stanley Cup with Marc-Andre Fleury standing on his head, and that's how we end up losing the Cup, well we can live with that.
I've got to believe that the Red Wings are looking back to their series with the Dallas Stars where they were up 3-0 before Dallas came back to win two straight. At that point everyone was talking about how the momentum had shifted heading to Game 6 in Dallas. Well the Red Wings came in and obliterated the Stars in their home arena.
I'm not saying that Detroit will obliterate Pittsburgh in Game 6, but this is a team with a lot of composure and I don't think they are very happy right now.
STAAL TACTICS
The reason why the Penguins were able to win in Game 5 was that their role players stepped up and making as big, if not bigger impact on the game than the stars Malkin, Hossa and Crosby.
I'm not sure where Jordan Staal fits in that equation because he's not necessarily a role player and he's not necessarily one of the offensive stars either. But when you look at the minutes played in Game 5, Staal had 30 minutes, the same as Crosby, Malkin and Hossa. His even strength minutes were almost the same as the snipers despite that he does not have the big offensive numbers to go with the minutes.
But Staal, along with Max Talbot and Adam Hall got better as the game went on. Since Detroit plays a puck possession game that sees them in the offensive zone a lot, it was guys like Staal who were coming back the other way to break up plays and get the Penguins out of trouble on a lot of occasions.