Livetipsportal presents you tonight's game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Pens and Red Wings at the Mellon Arena of Pittsburgh. Leading 3-2 in the series, the Red Wings will be looking to win the Stanley Cup for the second straight year, while the Penguins are motivated to force a decisive game 7, which would take place friday in Detroit.
It would be a heart-breaker for Pittsburgh to loose tonight. They've already lost to Detroit on home ice in the game 6 of the Finals last year, and clearly don't want that to happen again. Loosing in the Finals is already hard when you played over 100 games to reach the finals, but loosing in front of your fans, family and friends is even harder. And doing so two years in a row would really be hard. So expect the Pens to come with a lot of energy and will to win.
But expect exactly the same thing for the Detroit Red Wings. Although they've been dominant in the playoffs on home ice with 11 wins in 12 games, they certainly don't want to have to play a game 7, where barely everything can happen. So they'll be looking to get the job done as soon as tonight. And there's no wonder that they know what it takes to win, as their roster has a total of 44 Stanley Cup rings, opposed to just 5 for Pittsburgh. Players like Nicklas Lidström, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby and Thomas Hölmström even won all of the 4 Stanley Cup titles of the Red Wings since 1997. Goalie Chris Osgood won 3 of those 4, missing the 2002 title as he was playing for the Islanders and Blues at that time. A total of 22 players in Detroit's roster already won at least one Cup, and 9 of them won it at least twice. Noone in Pittsburgh ever won two Cups.
Detroit also knows what it takes to conclude a series on the road, as they did it 5 times in 7 series since last year, including their whole 2008 playoffs victorious campaign and this year's first round against Columbus. As far as this season is concerned, they've won at least one game on the road in every series, except the Finals so far.
And with Datsyuk being back in the lineup, Detroit is finally at full strength. He looked in good shape in game 5, and helped the Red Wings to demolish Pittsburgh in a 5-0 domination. If Detroit had some concerns on the powerplay since the beginning of the series, they clearly found a way to solve it, scoring 3 powerplay goals in game 5. As a result, their PP% jumped from a horrible 8.3% to a more respectable 19.0% in this series.
The Penguins will certainly battle very hard to force a game 7, but the Red Wings have all the needed tools to counter that and lift the Cup for the second straight year.
Choice: Detroit Red Wings, with an odd of 2.70 at Betsson
