Shaun Best / Reuters

The health of Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom is the biggest factor in determining who will win this year's Stanley Cup finals rematch between Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Bob Duff

Detroit center Darren Helm had barely rammed the puck into the Chicago Blackhawks net for a 2-1 Red Wings overtime win Wednesday and another Western Conference title and almost immediately, thoughts turned toward a rerun.

Make that a rematch.

A Stanley Cup finals for the ages, times two.

It’s the defending champs versus the heirs to their throne, Sidney Crosby and a determined bunch of Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Wings were able to stop the march of the Penguins a year ago in a compelling six-game final.

Will history repeat itself?

It should by the smallest of margins — say Detroit in seven games — but only if the Wings are at full strength.

The best news for the Penguins isn’t who they’re playing, but who they might not be playing.

In Game 5 of the Western Conference finals Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom missed his second straight game with a mystery ailment, officially announced as a lower-body injury, though when Lidstrom was seen walking through the bowels of Joe Louis Arena before Wednesday’s game, he wasn’t hobbled in the least.

Meanwhile, a foot injury kept Pavel Datsyuk out for a third game, eliminating Hart (Datsyuk) and Norris Trophy finalists (Lidstrom) from Detroit’s lineup.

Lidstrom says he'll be ready for Saturday’s Cup finals opener Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, while a decision on Datsyuk won't be made until shortly before the game.

If neither player is near 100 percent, the landscape of this series should tilt toward the Penguins.

Shouldn’t it?

If Detroit’s absent such talent, isn’t it party time for Penguins superstars Crosby and Evgeni Malkin?

“We have another opportunity here,” Crosby said. “Sometimes you go that far and you never get a chance to go at it for awhile. We know that we've got a special opportunity to go at it again, and we want to take full advantage of it.

“To get this opportunity, you know what, I think a lot of guys in there whether they were part of the team last year or guys who are new, we feel really fortunate to have this opportunity. To go through what we went through last year was tough. But we've got a chance here, and we want to make the most of it.”

Considering Detroit’s injury crisis, the Penguins have reason to feel confident and logic suggests such developments would favor Pittsburgh, though the opportunity didn’t seem to help the Blackhawks all that much.

Without Lidstrom and Datsyuk in Game 4 of the Western finals at Chicago, Detroit romped to a 6-1 rout of the Blackhawks.

Minus Lidstrom in Game 5, defenseman Brett Lebda may have played his finest game as a Wing, assisting on both goals.

“There’s a lot of key guys out for us now, but that just shows the character of our team, the way we can dig down deep and get the job done,” Lebda said.

Without Datsyuk, Helm was remarkable, scoring the winner, but also killing a second-period Detroit penalty by making the puck his personal plaything for the majority of the shorthanded spell.

“He’s played with great tempo all series,” Wings coach Mike Babcock said of Helm. “He’s a blue-collar guy who goes out there, works hard and gives an honest day’s work every time he’s out there.
“He’s like the Energizer Bunny. He hits the ice and his feet are going full out.”

Regardless, even Babcock comprehends that lengthy absences by his star players will eventually swing momentum against his team.

“It’s way easier to replace good players in the short term than it is in the long term, because everyone can lift their level for a period of time,” Babcock said. “But how are you going to play like Nick (Lidstrom) every night? I haven’t seen anyone play like Nick every night except Nick.”

Babcock will have trouble convincing Chicago that things would have eventually changed. Detroit’s never-ending supply of talent left the Blackhawks shaking their heads.

“They’ve got a lot of speed, a lot of skill and a lot of depth,” Chicago defenseman Duncan Keith said. “You look at a guy like Darren Helm. He played in the minors all year and he was probably their best player (Wednesday).”

As top Red Wings players kept falling by the wayside — rookie defenseman Jonathan Ericsson was the latest, rushed to hospital Wednesday afternoon for an emergency appendectomy, joining center Kris Draper (groin), winger Tomas Kopecky (facial fractures) and defenseman Andreas Lilja (post-concussion syndrome) among other regulars in sick bay — the Western Conference finals took on the resemblance of a schoolyard competition where one side is significantly better than the other.

Yet no matter how many Detroit players were removed from the mix, things never evened up.

It remained advantage Detroit.

“We knew they were good, but they showed us how resilient they are,” Chicago defenseman Brent Seabrook said.

I know what you’re thinking. After the Wings hoisted the Cup last year, I picked the Pens to beat the Wings in a rematch. But the basis of that prediction changed dramatically when right winger Marian Hossa, among Pittsburgh’s most dangerous forwards in the finals, switched sides and joined the Red Wings.

"It's a unique situation right now,” Hossa said. “Definitely this doesn't happen often. I have to make this not too big a distraction. I just have to use it as an advantage."

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