FanHouse Chris Osgood

The real NHL awards will be handed out Thursday night in Las Vegas, so FanHouse decided to hand out its own special awards for the 2008-09 season.

During the 2007-08 season, Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Vesa Toskala made blooper reels across the NHL for allowing a goal against the New York Islanders from 190 feet away. Hey, it happens to the best of them, and just to prove it, we introduce you to the 2008-09 nominees for the Vesa Toskala Award, celebrating the worst goal allowed of the year.

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We'll be running our division-by-division preview of the offseason beginning later in the week, but we wanted to give the two top dogs their own space. Today: the summer outlook for the Red Wings. Tomorrow, the Stanley Cup champion Penguins.

The Red Wings came within one game of repeating as Stanley Cup champions. A goal or two here or there, and their mission – and Marian Hossa's – is accomplished.

Instead, Detroit's first question mark going into the summer months is Hossa. It's widely expected he'll re-sign with the Wings for five years or so, but that will push Detroit essentially to the limit when it comes to the cap, which is projected to be about $57 million again.

DETROIT -- Extraordinary. Wait, that word isn't grand enough to describe what happened here Friday night. Thrilling? Stunning? It was both, and so much more. It was babyface goalie Marc-Andre Fleury making a couple of huge saves in the final, throat-clutching seconds. It was Sidney Crosby lifting the silver chalice and kissing it once, twice, barely buckling under his twisted knee. It was heavy-handed Maxime Talbot scoring a pair of improbable goals, while Evgeni Malkin raised his game to an entirely different level.

It was Marian Hossa dropping to his knees in sorrow, the pain that accompanies having to watch another team celebrate on his home ice for the second straight season almost unbearable. It was Chris Osgood, dazzling in goal, but not dazzling enough. It was a wave of wing-wheeled, veteran Europeans pushing the reigning champions as hard as they could be pushed, and the young, energetic pups in black refusing to budge.

It was Pittsburgh 2, Detroit 1, the Stanley Cup changing hands in spectacular fashion.

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The Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings have combined to play 209 games this season, and at 8 PM ET Friday, not one of those games will matter, as everything these two teams have accomplished this season will come down to 60 minutes. Perhaps the biggest 60 minutes any of these guys will ever play in their careers.

If you like the historical perspective of a Game 7, and if you're the superstitious type (and who among us isn't?) there's plenty of odd facts and dates that will make fans for both teams feel good about their chances in this winner take all game. From the department of stats that sound cool but don't really mean anything, consider the following.

DETROIT – Sure, the flying octopi help. So do the throngs of rabid fans wearing jerseys ringed in the color of blood, and a no-nonsense building that doesn't require fancy bells and whistles in order to rock, and old-school rituals that get passed down like success.

As Red Wings coach Mike Babcock was saying Thursday, on the eve of one of the grandest, coolest spectacles in sports, this city is a part "of Canada that just got lost ... and these people love hockey, absolutely love hockey."

Former great Ted Lindsay, born on the cusp of the Great Depression, makes a point of stopping by for team meetings before each round, plopping down in his stall in the dressing room. Legends roam the halls, from Gordie Howe to Steve Yzerman. Players here retire, or maybe they get traded, or go elsewhere for a salary bump, but few ever really shed the thrill that comes with lacing it up for Hockeytown, USA.

One of the great Stanley Cup traditions is its presentation. Yes, commissioner Gary Bettman -- after getting booed lustily -- takes a moment to congratulate the owners and general manager who helped put the team together. But the first person to touch the Stanley Cup after it is brought out to the ice surface is not an executive or a coach. It's the captain of the winning team.

Once the captain has his moment, he picks the second player to hoist the Cup. Since we know who gets it first, the only fun we can have is figuring out who will get it second.

For years, Chris Osgood hasn't gotten the respect that he deserves. Despite backstopping the Red Wings to three Stanley Cups -- twice as the starter -- there have always been questions about Osgood's abilities. It's almost unprecedented for a goaltender to win as much as Osgood as and not be given the respect he deserves.

Granted, Osgood has always played behind great defenders in Detroit be it the likes of Nicklas Lidstrom, Larry Murphy or Chris Chelios. Since the Red Wings reached the Finals in 1995, they have perennially been one of the most star studded teams in the NHL. And without a doubt, Osgood is one of those stars.

Heading into Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final, it was pretty much assumed that Marc-Andre Fleury was going to have to come up big in net for the Pittsburgh Penguins to force a seventh game. He not only stood up to the challenge in Pittsburgh's 2-1 win, he made what appeared to be one of the biggest saves of the season when he turned aside Daniel Cleary on a breakaway in the final minute of regulation.

As it turns out, that wasn't even the biggest save of the night. Video's after the jump.

Why not make it seven?

When there's hockey being played as urgently, breathlessly, and brilliantly as Tuesday night's Game 6, and you're given the gift of more, you don't ask why. You just accept it and offer gratitude to the two teams who made it possible. Forget Saturday's anti-climax, a 5-0 win for the Red Wings over the Penguins that again had Detroit looking epic and Pittsburgh embodying the lamb. Forget what you've known through six games.

These two teams deserve the most poignant of climaxes to the thrilling narrative they've written thus far.

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Without actually facing elimination, the Pittsburgh Penguins couldn't have faced a bigger must-win than they did Tuesday night. While Detroit hasn't truly dominated the Penguins in the opening two games of the Stanley Cup finals, they have played well enough to win both. Since there isn't much in hockey that's more dangerous than a hot Detroit team, the Penguins had to find a way to cool them off before things got out of hand.

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