So, Garth Snow and the rest of the Philadelphia Flyers will wait for another chance to win the Stanley Cup. The goaltending problem was hardly the only problem, but it was one.

Neither Snow nor Ron Hextall could make the incredible save necessary to win the Cup. A save or two wasn’t the difference, Detroit was – the Stanley Cup champion Wings.

Sixteen goals to five in Detroit’s favor. The Flyers scored two, that’s right two, even strength goals in four games. The second of those goals came in the closing seconds of game four. Eric Lindros scored that goal – his only goal against the Wings.

The playoff’s MVP, Mike Vernon, the backup Wings goalie during the regular season, won all 20 playoff wins Detroit had. He became the fourth backstop since 1939 to win more games in the playoffs than during the regular season, the second time Vernon has done so. Both times, in Calgary and Detroit, his teams won the Cup.

It was Detroit’s speed over the Flyers’ size. You can’t hit what you can’t catch. It was Philadelphia, like Colorado, refusing to give Detroit credit, until the Wings had won four games.

It was Flyer coach Terry Murray blistering the paint in a closed door team meeting before game four. Murray came out to meet the press and called his team’s effort in game three a “choke situation.”

He believed, and he wasn’t alone, that his captain, Eric Lindros, quit in game 3.

Murray and Lindros are in a feud. Flyer GM Bob Clarke said before the finals that Murray could come back next year to coach. Murray said he wanted to. That was before games three and four.

Detroit coach Scotty Bowman won his seventh Cup ring as a coach. He and Detroit GM Jim Devellano (officially senior vice-president of hockey operations) do not get along. Will Bowman go to Toronto as GM for newly appointed Leafs President Ken Dryden, the same Dryden who played net for Bowman Cup winners in Montreal? Will Devellano be released by the Wings?

It doesn’t take long for next year’s questions to begin. For now, know this: the city of Detroit is Hockeytown. Their fans are loyal and intense about their Wings.

There was no riot after game four in Detroit. The fans filled the streets, the horns honked, the hugs were free and the Cup was back in one of the NHL’s original six cities. After 42 year of courting the Cup, Lord Stanley’s gift will be the subject of genuine affection in Mowtown, where they know there “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing.”