DETROIT - Max Talbot is the jokester in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ dressing room, a low-round draft pick on a team filled with first-round big names who doesn’t complain when he’s shifted to the fourth line or asked to take on a difficult role.

How’s this for an assignment in a little-noticed career: The man asked to win Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals for a team that looked to be out of playoff contention four months ago?

With Sidney Crosby limping and Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin not finding much open ice, Talbot played a game worthy of franchise icon Mario Lemieux by scoring both goals as the Penguins became the first team in 38 years to win a finals Game 7 on the road, holding off reigning champion Detroit 2-1 on Friday night.

“I had to be in the right place, right time to score two goals,” Talbot said. “Every day I wake up and say this is the best day of my life, but this is the best day of my life.”

As he talked, Talbot had tears in his eyes and he pulled his mother near to him, hugging her and giving her a big kiss.

Max Talbot, this is your moment — and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, too, as he finally quieted the talk he can’t win a big game by making 23 saves in the biggest game of all.

“It’s not just Sid and Geno’s team, it’s everybody’s team,” Talbot said. “Maybe it’s storybook or not, but what’s important is we won the Cup. I don’t care how many goals I scored.”

Now, the list of players responsible for the Penguins winning Stanley Cups includes first-round draft picks Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Crosby, Malkin, Fleury — and Talbot, an eighth-rounder and the 234th player taken in the 2002 draft, a proven scorer in juniors who was told he must reshape his game to make it to the NHL.

Retool it he did, becoming a grinder, a role player, a utility man deluxe with a knack of scoring big goals in big games, such as the goal he scored in the final minute of finals Game 5 last year, with the champagne on ice in Joe Louis Arena. The Penguins went on to win in three overtimes, although they lost the series a game later.

Video   Presenting the Cup June 12: The Pittsburgh Penguins were awarded hockey's most coveted trophy following their Game 7 victory over the Detroit Red Wings.

Asked to describe his goals, Talbot said, “No, I can’t remember how I scored and I don’t care how I scored. I can’t believe that we won the Stanley Cup.”

And remember the label of City of Champions given Pittsburgh in 1979, when the Pirates and Steelers were world champions? Pittsburgh, the smallest city with three major league sports teams, has won the last two titles in major pro sports with the Penguins following up the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory on Feb. 1.

An hour after Game 7 ended, hundreds of delirious Penguins fans in Joe Louis Arena began chanting, “Stanley Cup! Super Bowl! Stanley Cup! Super Bowl!”

The player known as Mad Max for his sense of humor, gift of gab and his ridiculously funny TV commercial for a car dealership pulled it off on a night that Malkin and Crosby couldn’t. Crosby was hurt early in the second period and was on the ice for one shift in the third.

By winning, the Penguins completed one of the most improbable comebacks in NHL history. Stuck in 10th place in the Eastern Conference in mid-February, they fired coach Michel Therrien although he had taken him to the finals last year and replaced him with minor-league coach Dan Bylsma.

Video   Game 7 highlights: Penguins put away Wings June 12: Take a look at the key plays from Pittsburgh's 2-1 defeat of Detroit to win the Stanley Cup.

“Once we got in playoffs, at the end we had won 18 of 21, we were playing pretty good and I thought we had a chance,” said Lemieux, the first ex-player to win a Stanley Cup as a primary owner.

Bylsma immediately installed a more uptempo, press-the-attack offense that eased the tension in an unhappy locker room and the Penguins took off, going 18-3-4 down the stretch. They pulled off an upset in the second round when they out second-seeded Washington by winning 6-2 in Game 7 — yes, on the road.

They’re the first team since those Al MacNeil-coached Canadiens not only to win Game 7 on the road, with six teams trying and failing since, but to win with a rookie coach who took over at midseason.

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