FanHouse Marc Andre Fleury

I don't know how Penguins general manager Ray Shero pulled it off, but he managed to not only retain the services of Ruslan Fedotenko and Bill Guerin, two of the teams top-six forwards from their Stanley Cup winning team, but he did so while getting them to take paycuts.

After signing Guerin to a one-year deal on Monday, the Penguins announced that they agreed to terms with Fedotenko Friday afternoon. Rob Rossi of the Tribune Review reports the deal as being worth $1.8 million, down from the $2.25 million he made a season ago.

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. Yesterday we took a look at the Red Wings. Today: the summer outlook for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Thanks to Max Talbot's two-goal performance in Game 7, along with Marc-Andre Fleury's buzzer-beating save on Nicklas Lidstrom, the Pittsburgh Penguins brought home their third Stanley Cup. General manager Ray Shero now has the task of dealing with 10 unrestricted free agents and finding a way to construct a team that is capable of keeping the Cup in Pittsburgh.

It was a pretty big deal when Red Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, for the first time in his NHL career, missed a playoff game in the Western Conference finals. The future Hall of Famer missed Games 4 and 5 against the Chicago Blackhawks (both Detroit wins) and, as it turns out, he had a pretty good -- and extremely painful -- excuse.

He was having his testicle operated on as a result of an injury suffered in Game 3.

The Pittsburgh Penguins ended a 17-year Stanley Cup drought on Friday night with a 2-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings, giving the franchise its third championship. While current general manager Ray Shero will get his name on the cup for overseeing the hockey operations the past three seasons, former general manager Craig Patrick also had a hand in putting this team together.

After the jump, a player-by-player look at how the 2008-09 Penguins were built over the years.

Here's the good news for Detroit Red Wings backup goalie (and soon-to-be free agent) Ty Conklin: You've been a part of three of the past four Stanley Cup Finals, two of which have gone to seven games, while the other was about three inches and a tenth of a second from also seeing a winner-take-all game. And that fourth year? Eastern Conference final with the Buffalo Sabres. Not many players can say they've been a part of such history.

The bad news? He's been on the short end of the stick each and every time.

That disastrous Game 5 performance by Marc-Andre Fleury seems like an eternity ago, doesn't it? The Penguins' 24-year-old goaltender was brilliant in their Games 6 and 7 wins, and in each contest was responsible for the game-clinching, game-saving and game-winning saves to help the Penguins claim the third Stanley Cup in franchise history.

On Friday night, with 6.2 seconds to play in the season, Fleury made two of the biggest saves of his career as he not only turned aside a shot from Henrik Zetterberg through traffic, but he also stopped future Hall of Fame defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom on the rebound as time expired. Video after the jump.

The Conn Smythe Trophy has been handed out since 1965. It's given to the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

In 2009, this was not an easy decision. There were plenty of viable candidates on both of the finalists, the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins. Though five players have won the Conn Smythe while playing for the team that lost the Finals, this was not a year for that to happen.

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.

In The Face-Off Circle: A game-by-game look at the face-off matchups in the Stanley Cup Final

Tuesday's game 6 between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings proved to be one of the most intense, exciting, and nail-biting games in this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, as it literally came down to a matter of inches in the closing minutes of the third period. It was also the first game in the series where the two teams were even in the face-off circle, as both teams won 24-of-48 draws.

Which ones had an impact on the game? Find out after the jump.