DET vs PIT

PITTSBURGH - Almost an hour after Wednesday's Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, a group of drunken Pittsburgh Penguins fans in a luxury suite atop Mellon Arena loudly accosted a group of people sitting in the lower bowl wearing Red Wings sweaters.

"Go home Red Wings," they bellowed for at least 20 minutes in the otherwise empty arena, their beer muscles fully flexed from the safe distance.

The Red Wings faithful - who appeared to be friends and family members of players - stayed mute, with security personnel standing alert, but who for some reason were not sent to shoo the inebriated louts home.

It was a tough night, in other words, to be a Red Wings partisan in the Steel City. Not only were the Red Wings beaten, for the first time in a while they were beaten up a little too.

Holmstrom banged up

Today, Red Wings coach Mike Babcock indicated that forward Tomas Holmstrom might be questionable to play Game 4, after a hard hit in the crease from Hal Gill in the third period.

Holmstrom seemed to be favouring his right leg as he came off the ice, and he generally took a pounding all night - although he managed to draw a couple of penalties in the process.

"After the game, he didn't feel too good," Babcock said. "The good thing is, we have today to look at it and see how he is tomorrow, and then we'll move ahead from there."

Both teams took Thursday off from practice. Babcock believes nothing good could have come from his team being on the ice today. While Babcock is no Phil Jackson-style "Zen-master," he does subscribe to a philosophy that too much of anything is a bad thing. That includes hockey in the playoffs.

'Rest is a weapon'

"You know, it's a grind. It goes forever. Just never seems to end," Babcock said. "And so I think just staying fresh as a team and using today in a good manner and not wearing on your people is (good).

"Understanding that you've got to get re-energized, and that rest is a weapon, and get prepared to play. And, getting the lessons out of the game, like last night, that you can. But no sense beating yourself up over it. It's a new day today. It's sunny. Let's go."

One thing it seems Babcock will stress Friday at practice is for his top players to get, in one of his favourite phrases, "a little greasy."

"Our top group is being a little too fine right now," Babcock said. "But they're real proud guys and they're smart guys. They know."

Grump is gone

On the Penguins' side, there was no practice either. Penguins coach Michel Therrien, in fact, was late getting to the arena for required media availability because he had to pick up his daughter from school.

Therrien wasn't the Grumpy Gus of the previous few days. Funny how a victory will do that. Therrien was happy with how physical and inhospitable his team was at home, to say nothing of the fans afterward.

"There's no doubt we want to be physical," Therrien said. "We're both here to play a physical game. One thing for me that I see is that our team is getting better every game. Our team is getting more comfortable every game. Our team's got more confidence every game."

Chelios may return

Babcock didn't say anything about any potential lineup changes for Game 4, but speculation continues to mount that 46-year-old defenceman Chris Chelios might make his first appearance of the series. Andreas Lilja, who was not good in Game 3, is the most likely D-man to take a seat for Chelios.

Wings goalie Chris Osgood said his team lost as a team, though, and nobody is pointing any fingers.

"We didn't come into the series thinking we were going to win four straight. We were hoping to. But to say we expected it to be a hard series would be right on," Osgood said.

Said Osgood's longtime friend and teammate Kris Draper: "I thought last night's game was a hard-fought hockey game. We made a couple mistakes, and it resulted in goals for the Penguins. And when you're playing a team that's so talented offensively you certainly have to make sure you take care of your own end.

"And we had, like I said, some mistakes. Like I said, it's over and done with. We can't change what happened last night. And our focus is going to be on our preparation here for the next couple days to get ready for Game 4.

"The coach wants to come up and make sure that the players still feel confident, and we do. I mean, we still have a great feeling in our dressing room. And Mike's going to be the first one to tell you that, that we knew that this was going to be a series. And that's what it's turned into."