A lot of things went wrong for Pittsburgh in Game 5, but the one that was out of their control was the return of Pavel Datsyuk — who obviously had a major impact on this game.

One example? Just over 13 minutes into the first period, he picked up the puck at his own blueline, sped uncontested through the neutral zone and, with the Pens defence backing up quickly, dished off to Dan Cleary who then found the back of the net on a flutterpuck.

1-0 Detroit.

One thing having Datsyuk in the lineup allowed for was that Mike Babcock was able to adjust his lines and, perhaps most importantly, ease some of the burden on Henrik Zetterberg at centre (although they played together for much of the game's even-strength minutes). Some of the following figures are obviously influenced by the fact this game turned into a laugher midway through, but here's a comparison between Games 1 through 4 ice time to what we saw in Game 5, and how Datsyuk's nearly 18 minutes came into play:

Leino drew out of the lineup, so his nine minutes or so obviously had to be replaced, but the other big differences were the fact that Cleary's ice time came down nearly three minutes and the likes of Franzen, Hossa, Helm and Hudler were used about a minute less. (Some of that difference was made up by the fact Samuelsson and Maltby were out more often later in the game.)

The results of replacing a fringe player like Leino with Datsyuk meant for a deeper group, with eight forwards playing 14+ minutes, up from six or seven in the earlier games, and five forwards playing 17:30 or more. Datsyuk had averaged 20:22 minutes per game up to this point in the postseason, so it's possible he gets more of a workout next game.

He certainly didn't look rusty.