Bob Duff

PITTSBURGH - Every once in a while, like an excited kid around the Christmas tree, Chris Osgood admits he takes a peek.

For an instant, his focus flashes away from the puck to check out which of the Pittsburgh Penguins superstars is bearing down on him.

"Most of the time when they’re shooting, I’m so focused on the puck itself, I don’t know who it is," Detroit Red Wings goalie Osgood said. "But there are times when I realize it’s (Sidney) Crosby, or (Evgeni) Malkin, or (Marian) Hossa."

He may give them a second look, but Osgood seldom gives the situation a second thought.

Don’t look now, but hockey’s favorite Detroit whipping boy has put the Red Wings to within a win of whipping the Penguins.

A decade ago, when Osgood backstopped the Wings to a Stanley Cup, some labeled him the worst goalie ever to win a Cup.

After Saturday’s 2-1 victory over the Penguins in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals left Detroit up 3-1 in the series and a win away from capturing Cup No. 11, only a fool would suggest that Osgood isn’t a huge reason why that is so.

Generally, the goaltender gets the brunt of the attention showered upon him when a team wins the Stanley Cup. Think Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy, Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

Not Osgood. He’s treated like the Paris Hilton of the hockey set. He’s famous, but nobody seems to know why.

To outsiders, Osgood is the perplexing problem in the Wings lineup.

He keeps on winning, pushing legends aside and yet, it seems as if he really isn’t doing all that much behind the defensive dynamo that is Detroit.

That all changed Saturday.

Quite simply, he was the best player on the ice.

"He carried the game for us," Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom said of his netminder.

While he didn’t face as many shots (23) as Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury (30), his opposite number, Osgood made multiple point-blank stops on Crosby, Pascal Dupuis and Hossa. He stopped Malkin twice to help the Wings survive a two-man disadvantage for 1:27 in the third period.

After deflecting shots from some of the National Hockey League’s best shooters, Osgood proved equally adept at deflecting the praise for his effort.

"We blocked a ton of shots and we were able to get in the shooting lanes, get the puck, retrieve it and get it down the ice," he said of the successful third-period penalty kill that preserved the win.

Others in the Detroit dressing room are willing to step up and point out that their goalie is their go-to guy.

"Unbelievable," was how Detroit center Kris Draper described Osgood’s performance.

"Not just on the 5-on-3 situation, but throughout the whole game, I thought he made some key saves," added Lidstrom.

You might think facing a smorgasbord of snipers of the variety Pittsburgh can throw at a netminder would give a guy sleepless nights.

Not Osgood. When he thinks about facing Crosby, Malkin and company, he gets all tingly inside.

"It’s fun playing against this team because they skate well and it’s end-to-end action," Osgood said. "These guys are all-stars, world-class players."

The sort of adulation never afforded Osgood, despite his impressive resume.

Osgood jumped into the No. 1 role for Detroit in 1993 at 21 when injuries scuttled the veterans on the depth chart ahead of him.

It seems like they’ve been trying to run him out of town ever since. When the Wings won the Cup in 1997, Osgood took a back seat to Conn Smythe Trophy winner Mike Vernon. He took over for the traded Vernon the following spring and the Wings won again, but what’s remembered more about Osgood’s performance are the long-shot goals he surrendered to Jamie Langenbrunner and Al MacInnis in the run up to the Cup.

Three years later, Osgood was exiled to the New York Islanders when the Wings acquired Dominik Hasek, who backstopped them to the 2002 Cup.

During the 2004-05 lockout, Osgood, now with the St. Louis Blues, sought out help from Stan Matwijiw, a professional goalie tutor based in Novi, Mich. to help sort out his game. "I got a call from Chris the second week of August the summer before the lockout," Matwijiw recalled. "When he first game to me, I was a little unsure about what he was looking for. This was an NHL goalie with 11 years of experience. I didn't know whether he was just looking to fine tune some things, so we talked about it.

"To my surprise, he said, ‘I want you to completely tear my game apart and rebuild it.’"

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