Looking to their past
Wings try to find team from regular season
DETROIT – The NHL’s regular season is often dismissed.
It starts in early October during baseball’s playoffs and the heart of football season and rolls along in relative anonymity for the next six months.
The Stanley Cup playoffs usually feature upsets, showing seedings don’t matter much, and recent defending champions have been getting bounced in the first round.
Detroit is desperately hoping to prove this past regular season was relevant against the Pittsburgh Penguins, starting with Game 5 tonight at Joe Louis Arena – and winding up back there with Game 7 if necessary.
“That’s one of the reasons you want to finish as high as possible, to gain that home-ice advantage,” Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. “You have to take advantage of that, too, when you have a chance.”
The Red Wings have up to two games left at home against Pittsburgh in the suddenly deadlocked Stanley Cup finals – thanks to earning 13 more points in the regular season. It seems to be the only edge they have at this point.
“If you listen to what people on the outside say, Pittsburgh was done after two games. I don’t think anybody in our locker room thought that,” Detroit coach Mike Babcock said Friday. “Now if you listen to what people on the outside say, the Red Wings are done after two games. So I don’t think that’s what we think.
“What we think is … we’re going to come here tomorrow and play well.”
The Red Wings usually do at home.
They’re an NHL-best 10-1 this postseason at Joe Louis Arena, where they beat Pittsburgh twice, and are outscoring visitors by an average of two goals a game.
Detroit’s lone loss at home was against Anaheim in triple overtime on May 3, losing what has been the only game this postseason to be extended past one extra period.
After playing the first five games in an eight-day span, both teams will get a break after Saturday’s game. The NHL scheduled two days off before Game 6 on Tuesday night.