The Detroit Red Wings won their Game 7 matchup? Why? Well my answer on WLIE yesterday was Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Johan Franzen for starters. They’ve been there. Even Justin Abdelkader who scored the game winner was a “black ace” when the Wings last won their Cup in ‘08-09. He got that experience watching from the sidelines, practicing and traveling with the team, talking to the players and coaches, at least that’s what he told me while his teammates were hoisting the Cup.

Philadelphia -- The Washington Capitals came into town off a pretty impressive victory over the Carolina Hurricanes last night. On this night they played on fumes. They looked disjointed and they were never really in the game. They were dominated. But sometimes in a horrific effort this is a bright spot and they did have one. Goaltender Philipp Grubauer made his NHL debut.

At 6-4 this big winger suits up for the Plymouth Whalers and has a physical side to his game that might set him apart from many of the other prospects in the 2012 NHL Draft. It might even make him a first-round pick.

In his second year he had moderate offensive numbers but when the playoffs hit he turned it on averaging a point-per-game with almost as many goals (7) as he had in the regular season (9).

In the 1984 NHL Entry Draft Craig Billington was drafted in the second round by the New Jersey Devils. There was no combine but the former NHL goalie said that he ran until he couldn’t on the treadmill like a “comic book character” and then he was asked to lift some weights.

“I couldn’t move the bar when it came to bench pressing 145 pounds,” which was his approximate body weight at the time. He may have weighed a bit more but his point was if he had been judged by those standards today his quote was “they wouldn’t have invited me to join a men’s league”.

Both the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals enter their second round series feeling a little battered and bruised following a pair of grueling seven game gauntlets in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Rangers played a defensively focused brand of hockey during the regular season, utilizing a group of four defensemen who could be in most NHL teams top pairings in Dan Girardi, Marc Staal, Michael Del Zotto, and Ryan McDonagh, along with one of the league’s most dominant goaltenders in Henrik Lundqvist to create a fortress that flummoxed many NHL teams this season.