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After the toll of the final horn, Pittsburgh Penguins fans could only stand and applaud. Their team had just lost a deciding Stanley Cup game six at home. They missed crucial chances. They looked flawed, even foolish at times throughout the championship series. Still the fans clapped. Their team had lasted all of six games with the Detroit Red Wings and they were proud of it.

Surely, this was not the outcome Pittsburgh had in mind when the trade deadline rolled around. The Penguins mortgaged a slice of their future to come away with the pick of the trade litter, Marian Hossa. And so along they sent a gift basket of future success, (Colby Armstrong, Erik Christensen, Angelo Esposito, and a first-round pick) for their half-season rental. They tore up their mission statement and said "aw, heck!". For all that investment, it was a matter of inches and seconds that kept Hossa's last-ditch tie attempt out of the net.

Combined with Sid the Kid, hockey's crowned prince, and Evgeni Malkin's MVP campaign, the Penguins began a Stanley Cup run in earnest. They destroyed the very destroyable Senators, trampled over the feeble Rangers, and beat up on an injured Flyers team, all the while losing two out of fourteen playoff games.

Perhaps the Pens' biggest boost came between the pipes. Marc-Andre Fleury lost half his season to injury and nearly had his job snatched by appearing-from-thin-air Ty Conklin. His career was marked with inconsistency and failure to meet expectations. The whispers were deafening. The former number-one overall pick had all the tools, none of the track record, and dwindling time to prove he could turn in around.

Then, in the postseason, he played the best hockey of his life. Yet, all it did was delay the inevitable.

Who outside of the 313 area code - or possibly someone with an unnatural affection for buffalo wings - was not rooting for the Penguins? How could you not? It's almost unholy. Hockey's prince, 20 years of age, barely able to grow something resembling a playoff beard, yet fighting a battle against men and often winning. But this team was so much more than your run-of-the-mill NHL squad. This was hockey's version of the Yankees - everyone else's term, not mine. They have bruisers, they've had success, and they have Eastern Europeans - what's not to dislike?

It was good versus evil. Unfortunately, evil was too good.

No, they're beyond good. The Detroit Red Wings are the gold-standard for franchise success...in any sport. Better than the Yankees or Red Sox. Better than the Colts or Patriots. Better than the Lakers, Spurs, or Celtics. They're just better.

While we're not facing the Cold War any longer, a rift still exists between the United States and much of Eastern Europe and Russia. Scouting Russian players has never been easy. Bringing them overseas can be even harder. But the Red Wings make it look so easy. Four of the Wings' top five regular season scorers are Eastern Europeans drafted in the second round or later (Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Jiri Hudler). Their captain, Lidstrom, is the first European to ever capture a Stanley Cup title as a captain. It's his fourth championship.

Hockey started the European expansion before basketball ever jumped on board. These days, many basketball teams are taking a step back from overseas talent - only three or four Europeans are projected to be drafted in the first round of this year's NBA draft. Baseball's Latin expansion took place over a number of years. Today, baseball teams have branches in Latin countries, scouting and developing Latin players are done by Latin officials in Latin countries.

The Red Wings have bucked the trend. They've adopted the sons of Mother Russia and her bordering countries for the greater part of two decades. They try to be humble and chalk it up to luck, but other NHL teams never seem to get that lucky. Surely, there is something they know that other personnel departments would like to know.

Sure, there's been some postseason disappointment, but what currect dynasties haven't had such problems? Kobe's Lakers struggled post-Shaq, the Patriots have gone Championship-less for three seasons, and the Red Sox dynasty - still strange to say - has only won two titles. The Yankees farm system was non-existent after their 90's run, the Celtics built through trades and have yet to win, and the Colts took home only one Lombardi trophy.

Since the early 1990's, nobody in any sport, salary cap or otherwise, has done it better than the Detroit Red Wings. In 16 seasons (starting in 1991-92), Detroit...

• won four Stanley cups, more than any other franchise
  
• never finished under .500 and never missed the playoffs (they are the only team in the NFL, NHL, MLB, or NBA to accomplish that)
  
• haven't scored below 93 points in a season, not counting the strike shortened season in 1994-95 when they scored a league best 70 points (15 NHL teams scored less than 93 points last season alone) and have scored over 100 points in 12 of those seasons, including EVERY season since 1998-99.
  
• led the league in points six times and won their division 12 times.
  
• have played in a staggering 214 (127-87) postseason games for an equally ridiculous average of 12.5 playoff games per season
  
• has moved forward after the retirement of Steve Yzerman and Scotty Bowman and the departure of Sergei Federov

The Detroit Red Wings story is remarkable and the franchise should stand the test of time as one of hockey's greatest franchises, even if they are lacking a few more Championships than past teams.

Where else could a 46 year-old defenseman become the oldest man to ever win a Stanley Cup? Who else could survive having a future hall-of-fame goaltending legend flounder his way to the bench in lieu of a 35 year-old superstar? Where else could a struggling defenseman, shunned in Boston, awful in Calgary, and irrelevant in Los Angeles, find redemption and log key minutes on a Stanley Cup champion?

Only one team; a team that has defined dominance in a salary cap era that trends everything towards parity. A team where Jiri Fischer and Vladimir Kostantinov, who both nearly died next to their teammates, are family.

And a team where even the defeated home crowd at Mellon Arena must stand up and applaud.