The complete game of the Detroit Red Wings is epitomized by nobody better than Henrik Zetterberg.
Zetterberg and Sidney Crosby played within 13 seconds of each other in Game 1 (22:48, compared to Crosby's 22:35) and spent much of the game on the ice together.
Early on Crosby really tried to take it physically to Zetterberg, but as the game went along, Zetterberg started to assert himself.
In the faceoffs Zetterberg absolutely destroyed Crosby (Zetterberg's 75% to Crosby's 30%).
When you look at the match-up, I thought Crosby played a very good hockey game in a lot of ways, but at the end of the night it was Zetterberg who came away the winner.
Justin Time
I don't know if I was as impressed as I was surprised by who scored what ended up being the goal that broke the game open in the third period, Justin Abdelkader.
Abdelkader only had four shifts for three minutes of ice time in the first two periods of Game 1. In the third period, he got five shifts for two minutes of ice time. One of his shifts was a mere 11 seconds – the shift that he scored to make the game 3-1.
Was it the biggest goal of his career? You'll have to check with him and see.
He scored a goal with 19 seconds left in the NCAA Frozen Four championship game in 2007 to give Michigan State the win over Boston College. That was obviously a huge one, but that was then, this is now.
I've got to think that Abdelkader believes that his Game 1 marker is the biggest of his career.
The goal took a 2-1 game, that could have gone either way at that point and opened up a two goal lead for Detroit on home ice, which Pittsburgh wasn't going to come back from.