The 2009 Stanley Cup Finals

AT 10:45 P.M. ON A FABULOUS FRIDAY, WHEN THE PITTSBURGH Penguins proved that there really is no party like a Detroit party, the youngest Stanley Cup-winning captain in NHL history took the trophy from commissioner Gary Bettman. ¶ "Congratulations," Bettman said. "How do you feel?" ¶ "I feel great!" ¶ Sidney Crosby's left knee might have been a mess—it was injured 5½ minutes into the second period of Game 7—but he really never had felt better in his life. Identified as the next great player practically before he was a teenager, Crosby, who would finish second only to Conn Smythe Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin in playoff scoring, has validated every expectation he has carried, mostly with grace, since he waltzed into the NHL four years ago.

For Wayne Gretzky, the wait for a Stanley Cup took five years. For Mario Lemieux, the owner of Crosby's team, it took seven. Now two months shy of his 22nd birthday, Crosby was lifting his legacy over his head.

There are no guarantees in this crazy world of hockey—you dream of winning the Stanley Cup as a kid, yet in those dreams you never spend all but 32 seconds on the bench in the third period of Game 7—but this will likely not be Crosby's last Cup. Like Gretzky's Oilers victory in 1984, which ended the Islanders' dynasty, the Pittsburgh win seemed like a turning of the page in NHL history.

This seven-act drama ranks with Montreal's comeback win over Chicago in '71 and the Rangers' title in '94 as the best of the post-1967-expansion finals.

GAME 1
May 30, Joe Louis Arena, Detroit
Red Wings 3, Penguins 1

ONE YEAR REMOVED FROM HIS VAUDEVILLIAN pratfall near the bench at the start of Game 1 of the 2008 finals, Penguins goaltender Marc-André Fleury mercifully managed to stay erect during his '09 entrée into Joe Louis Arena.

The trouble was, this time he flunked his boards.

The Red Wings' Chris Osgood made 31 saves to be named first star of the 3-1 Detroit win, but surely the second star belonged to the end boards. It takes as much time to learn their idiosyncrasies as it does for a leftfielder to appreciate the nuances of playing balls off Fenway Park's Green Monster. In Detroit home ice advantage includes that yellow strip along the base of the end walls. Despite the drills Pittsburgh did at the morning skate to get acclimated to the caroms, you can no more cram for these boards than you can master the SATs by cracking open a Kaplan prep book the night before the test.

The Red Wings scored their first two goals on plays Crosby would later describe as "member's bounces." Defenseman Brad Stuart kept a clearing attempt inside the zone and wristed a shot into the same area code as the net. The puck struck the boards, rebounded at an acute angle and ticked into the net off the back of Fleury's right leg.

The second hometown bounce came at an even more opportune time for Detroit, in the final minute of a second period in which the ice had seemed to be running downhill toward Osgood. This time, playoff-goal machine Johan Franzen corralled the carom from behind the Penguins' net and shot it off the back of a flopping Fleury's left leg with 57.4 seconds remaining, giving Detroit a 2-1 lead.