The Stanley Cup Finals are now set and ready to get underway.  The Detroit Red Wings will match up against the Pittsburg Penguins.  The Stanley Cup series is set to being on Saturday May 24 at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.  The game time is scheduled for 8:00 pm ET.  This series is going to be amazing as many people have anticipated this exact match up every since the 2008 playoffs started.

Detroit took home the Presidents Trophy this year for the best record in the entire NHL.  They are returning to the finals for the first time since 2002 and will looking to win their fourth Stanley Cup since 1997.  They are led by captain, Nicklas Lidstrom who is one of the best defenseman of all time.  Chris Osgood will man the net for Detroit after taking over for Domic Hasek early on in the playoffs.  He has had the top goals against average of 1.65 and third best save percentage of .927 in this year’s playoffs.  One concern for Detroit will be the absence of goal scoring machine John Franzen.  He is still out with concussion like symptoms.  Without him the Wings have struggled to produce offence at times.  He still leads all players with 12 playoffs goals and 5 game winning goals.  The pressure will now fall on Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Tomas Holdstrom to get the job done.  Currently Oddsmakers at Sportbetting.com have the Wings as -172 favorites heading into Saturday’s game.

The Penguins enter the finals with an impressive 12-2 record.  This is their first return to the finals since back in 1992 when they won the Stanley Cup.  They are led by the one-two punch of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.  They have combined for an amazing 40 points in only 14 playoffs games.  Crosby is tied with Zetterberg for most playoffs points.  Detroit is going to need to contain these two superstars.  We also can’t forget about Jordan Stall.  He has an excellent series against the Flyers where he notched 4 goals.  All three of these guys spend a lot of time on the power play which ranks second in playoff.  This is going to be an amazing series and one that will be talked about for the ages.

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