No one was talking about Briere and his newest sidekick, Vinny Prospal, the guy picked up from Tampa Bay after Peter Forsberg showed his old team the bottom of his iffy foot on his way to joining his older team. What was there to talk about? Briere spent big chunks of his season looking for someone to pass to, looking for someone to pass to him, looking to justify the $52 million the Flyers are investing in him, rather than grittier free agents named Drury and Gomez.

As for Vinny Prospal - didn't the Flyers trade him away once? Or was that Vaclav Prospal? Are they brothers? They're the same guy? No kidding.

There was this sense, not subtle at all, that these two guys and their highlight-resistant teammates were in the way of better looking teams and better looking matchups. So much so that when the Flyers series against Washington began, there didn't seem to be a strategy to contain the two.

Big mistake. Because other than a guy named R.J. Umberger - and take that, too, Versus and NBC - Briere and Prospal are a big reason two of those names have disappeared so far, and a big reason the third might, too, when the Flyers-Penguins Eastern Conference final series ends.

Clicking as if they spent their infancy in the same crib, Briere and Prospal have scored 11 goals combined in the 12 games so far, and have 26 points between them. Add in linemate Scott Hartnell's three goals and four assists, and you would think they might garner a mention in the intro to Game 1 Friday night.

Then again, it is one of the best untold stories of this season, especially when you factor in that the two weren't even born in the same country, never mind crib.

"The more you play together, the more you think like the other guy," Briere said after practice yesterday. "But in Vinny's case, it was instant."

As much as any player he's ever been with, he said, and he went on to list a handful. Certainly more so than it was with Simon Gagne, who was still adjusting from Forsberg's more passive style to Briere's hard-charging one when he suffered the October concussion that would impede and eventually end his season.

"Danny's more of an attacking guy," Flyers coach John Stevens said. "He's a different player than Peter was. He gets to the net, he wants to shoot the puck, he wants to be down low and attack the net down low."

Briere spent 25 games with Gagne this season, scored eight goals and assisted on 17 others. Gagne was not himself for all of those games, and the chemistry, Briere will tell you, took considerable work even when he was.

With Gagne, Briere assumed Forsberg's role as the setup guy, a role that was reversed when Prospal arrived. In the 15 regular-season games they played together, Briere had nine goals and eight assists. Prospal had four goals and 10 assists.

Since the playoffs began, Briere has eight goals and six assists, Prospal three goals and nine assists.

"Vinny has that ability to make quick tight plays," Stevens said. "He sees things right away, he's got great vision with the puck and usually he gets the puck to Danny right now, right away."

It's an interesting description, especially after Briere praised Prospal for being "patient with the puck" just minutes before.

"That gives me the extra second to try and get open, to try and get away from the defender," he said.

"Yeah, but he's very good at finding the open space," Prospal countered. "And he gives me a good chance to make a play into that open space. There are a couple of goals that come to mind. One was Washington here on the power play, where he just jumped ahead of the guy and I just slid him the puck . . . Those are plays some other guys might wait. But he got his legs going and got to the open space, and I was able to find him."

Here's a thought: Briere's early role as playmaker, and the tough stretch when he had no Butch to his Sundance, has allowed him to switch easily between both this postseason. At times, he and Prospal seem interchangeable, their thoughts acting as one regardless of who has the puck.

"You know what? It's so tough to explain," Briere said. "I'm trying to talk about chemistry and figure it out and I really can't. I've been playing for 10 years now in the league and I still don't understand why it clicks with some guys and it doesn't with others. It's so weird.

"But as long as it works, I don't care why." *

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