With long-range goals rare in today's game, the conference finals may be decided by the work of fearless net pests like Detroit's Tomas Holmstrom

	After backing into the crease area, Holmstrom will do whatever he can to get in Giguere's way. David E. Klutho/SI

Tomas Holmstrom positioned himself in front of the Anaheim net last Friday on a third-period Detroit Red Wings power play. NHL coaches like to call this an example of "traffic," but when the double-parked player is Holmstrom, he creates something more insidious than mere gridlock. He plants his skates millimeters outside the blue-tinted 44-square-foot area that delineates the crease and refuses to budge, raising hockey hell, obstructing the goaltender's view, tying up defensemen, tipping pucks and generally being a miserable cuss.

On a team with elegant Swedes such as Holmstrom's linemate Henrik Zetterberg and defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, Holmstrom is a Norse of a different color. "He can't skate," general manager Ken Holland says. "If you have him race most NHL players over 30 feet, he'd lose. But put a puck four feet away, tell him to get there first, and Homer" -- Holmstrom's nickname -- "will win that race. And when he sets up shop at the front of the net, they can't twist him or turn him."

Not that Ducks goaltender Jean-Sébastien Giguère and defensemen Scott Niedermayer and François Beauchemin weren't trying in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. Holmstrom jostled with all three as Lidstrom wound up for a slap shot from the point. A goalie, much like a hitter in baseball who picks up a pitch at its release point, can usually tell where a puck is headed if he can read the shot off the stick. Although Holmstrom is only 5'11", 202 pounds, he has a way of filling a goaltender's field of vision. Sometimes Holmstrom will take an arm off his stick and wave it, or he'll raise his stick and rotate it like the coupling rod on a locomotive's wheel. This time, as Lidstrom shot, Holmstrom pivoted and flapped his arms like a wind-blown scarecrow. The puck was lost in the thicket of Holmstrom and the three Ducks ("Three versus one, Homer loves those odds," said Detroit center Kris Draper) before somehow reappearing in the net. The workingman's goal with five minutes left, initially credited to Lidstrom but later awarded to Holmstrom (the puck appeared to glance off his upper body), gave the Red Wings a 2-1 victory. Holland called it "classic Homer," a fitting observation given the puck's odyssey.