Through six breathtaking laps of its hairpin turns, cliff-tracing curves, and capacious potholes deep enough to swallow nine months of earnest hockey in a single gulp, the bedrock of this so-called road to the Stanley Cup is still right there in your belief system.

Generally, you can believe today whatever you believed when the Penguins and Red Wings took to the highway two weeks ago. Here are the four things I believed then and I believe now:

I believe the Red Wings are better.

I believe the Penguins can beat them.

I believe the Penguins likely won't.

And, of course, I believe that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.

Speaking of flowers (and of shockingly cheap transitions), how important does it appear Marc-Andre Fleury, the Penguins' beloved Flower, shall be tomorrow night when Pittsburgh and Detroit decide nothing less than the next names to be inscribed on Lord Stanley's big gleaming cereal bowl?

Let me put it this way.

The way Fleury played in Game 6 Tuesday night?

The perfect positioning, lightning reflexes, cobra glove, flashing stick, Stretch Armstrong range, Gumby elasticity, and blind luck?

Yeah, we're gonna need to see that again.

From the top.

Fleury, of course, doubts that.

That's the little psychological trick he plays on himself, much in the way Hines Ward fools himself into thinking he is disrespected. Fleury did it again before Game 6, when he was coming back from his five-goal Gong Show performance at Joe Louis Arena.

"You know," quoth the Flower after stopping 25 of 26 shots to enable the 2-1 series-tying victory in Game 6, "I think I've learned over the years that it doesn't matter how many goals you give up in a game. I think it's a matter of you lose, you lose. So it doesn't matter if I give up one or five. So I try to forget about it. Put it in the back [of my mind] and the next day come to the rink with a smile on. Try to be positive and confident."

You know, I think I've learned over the years that how many goals you give up is little less than hockey fate itself.

I mean, if that's important.

You don't really need years of experience to appreciate this. A couple of months should do it.

The Penguins, just for example, have won 15 games in this playoff spring. In 11 of those, the opponent has scored two goals or one. The Penguins have lost eight games in the same span, and every time, the opponent has scored three goals or more.

The Penguins, to torture a point, are 11-0 in the postseason when Fleury allows one goal or two, 4-8 otherwise.

I'm no math teacher (though I play one in the paper), but if the Penguins expect to win tomorrow night, they might want to consider preventing a third Detroit goal. That sentence right there virtually guarantees that they will win, 8-6, but I'd imagine you'd find that equally satisfactory and refrain from contributing to some 500 e-mails.

Dan Bylsma's belief system is that Fleury and his shot-blocking defensemen will take all of their capabilities into the Joe tomorrow night.

"Marc is someone with the unique ability to refocus after pretty much any scenario," Bylsma said yesterday. "He's been tested. He's been talked about. He's been scrutinized. He's answered a lot of questions.When we put him out there for Game 6, we acted out of confidence because of the way he's responded. I wasn't surprised at all that he played the way he did."

Impediments to Fleury's excellence, however, are simply more evident in Detroit, where the Red Wings are 11-1 in the playoffs and take on all the frightful features of a team that led the National Hockey League in scoring, in shots, and in power-play percentage during the regular season, should anyone be able to remember it. Add to that the doggedly abstemious nature of the Penguins' offense in that building (three games, two goals), not to mention the weight of Game 7 history (in 14 Game 7s in the Stanley Cup final, the road team has won twice), and you have some appreciation for the Tarzanian challenge that confronts the Flower.

To be sure, it's not all on him.

Rob Scuderi blocked four shots the other night, three of them of an extreme game-changing nature. Brooks Orpik blocked six, Craig Adams, Max Talbot and Hal Gill two each. Petr Sykora, rescued from the postseason margins by the flagging effectiveness of Miroslav Satan, got hurt pretty badly throwing himself in front of another of the 20 shots kept out of Fleury's way by the Penguins' fast-rallying defense.

Throwing yourself in front of big whistling biscuits of vulcanized rubber is a huge element in the final desperate minutes of a hockey season, a critical element, and maybe even something you can believe in.