DETROIT — Marian Hossa swears he has no regrets.
The high-priced right wing stood by that, even after he watched his former team beat his current one and hoist the Stanley Cup. Even after he claimed that he left the Penguins for the Detroit Red Wings because the defending NHL champions gave him “the best chance to win the Cup.”
”That's life,” Hossa said after the Penguins' 2-1 Game 7 victory over the Red Wings on Friday night at Joe Louis Arena. “You have to move on. That's a great life experience. Sometimes, it's a tough pill to swallow, but there's another year.”
What left a bitter taste in Hossa's mouth was how he came up empty in the Cup Final. He took 23 shots on net but finished without a goal and registered only three assists for the series.
”Whether you like it or not, that's lots of pressure,” Hossa said. “When the pressure is on, you learn how to handle it. It's squeezing you. That's a pretty tough one. I tried to battle hard, but I couldn't get anything done offensively.”
That's not what the Red Wings expected from Hossa, not after he scored six goals and 26 points for the Penguins in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs. Not after he turned down a reported seven-year, $50 million offer from the Penguins to instead sign a one-year, $7.45 million deal with the Red Wings last summer, claiming they gave him “the best chance to win the Cup.” And certainly not after he scored 40 goals and 71 points in the regular season for the Red Wings and added six goals in the first three rounds of the playoffs.
”It's hard on him, too, being in the situation that he was in and everything around it,” Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said, “but I thought he did a heck of a job this year for us and in the playoffs, too.”
Just not in the Stanley Cup Final.
Still, Hossa would not second-guess his move.
”Regret⢠I don't regret it,” Hossa said. “It could be different circumstances if I signed in Pittsburgh. They probably couldn't sign some other players and they would be a different team. We can sit here for hours discussing this, but it could be a different team and different things, so I don't regret this decision.”
But Hossa did admit that he wilted under the pressure of playing the Penguins, the team he spurned in search of a Cup championship.
”It's definitely very tough,” Hossa said. “You try to avoid everything, but it's not easy. You've got lots of things going on and I tried to block it, but you're human. It's not easy.”
Only making it worse was watching Maxime Talbot — who said he was motivated to win the Cup so he could tell Hossa he made the wrong move in the traditional post-game handshake — score both goals in Game 7 to finish with more playoff tallies (eight) than Hossa (six).
Even so, Hossa said none of the Penguins had choice words for him.
”Nobody said anything,” Hossa said. “I shook their hands, I congratulated them and that was it.”
Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik said it wasn't necessary.
”The handshake line was pretty good,” Orpik said. “I didn't have to say anything to anyone, not even that one guy. Just winning it and seeing it on their face was enough.”
