And so, this is how it ends, one of those only-in-Philadelphia nights. It is a story that we pass down through the hockey generations, like baldness. The Flyers lost a playoff series to the New Jersey Devils and this will be the enduring symbol from the final game:

Flyers goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, trying to shoot a puck away from the front of his net, away to safety, instead seeing the puck picked out of the air by Devils forward David Clarkson and ricocheting behind him and into the goal.

It was impossible, and it happened.

It was Cechmanek-esque, or burlesque.

It joins the pucks that impossibly sneaked in through John Vanbiesbrouck that year against Toronto, and the Roman Cechmanek meltdown against Buffalo, and the Cup-losing goal that somehow eluded Michael Leighton in 2010, and the dizzily-spinning carousel that was the three-goaltender situation in 2011.

When that goal happened Tuesday night, it was only the first period. The Flyers’ deficit was only 2-1. But as soon as everyone realized what had happened, and that the puck was in the net, it was obvious that another chapter in the endless municipal tragicomedy was being written.

The final score was Devils 3, Flyers 1. The series was over in five games. Pinning it on Bryzgalov would be more than unfair. At the same time, nobody is ever going to forget how that second one got behind him.

The truth is, he played well in the series overall. Really, he has played well since he allowed five goals on 18 shots in Game 4 of the Flyers’ first-round series against Pittsburgh. In the first four games against Pittsburgh, his save percentage was an awful .844. In the next six games, going into last night, his save percentage was a credible .909.

He was good enough for them to win games, but it was the strangest thing during the series. In the games where Bryzgalov was at his best, the team was timid in front of him. They could never get it synced up.

On Tuesday night, playing without suspending star Claude Giroux, the Flyers came out hitting everything. Zac Rinaldo was a human missile. The Flyers took another 1-0 lead, as they seem to do every night -- but they couldn’t hold either that lead or their early emotional edge.

Overall, they played a much better game than they did in Games 2, 3 or 4 of the series. They did not struggle nearly as much with either getting the puck out of their end or with keeping possession in the New Jersey end. It was a much more even game.

But they were playing from behind because of the goal that went bump in the night. They could never overcome the shock.

And so it will be told.

Video: Every week the Daily News' Rich Hofmann provides answers to the three biggest questions in Philadelphia sports for CineSport's Noah Coslov. This week Rich answers questions about the Flyers and Sixers playoff hopes and offers his take on the Cole Hamels vs. Bryce Harper situation.

Well, the Flyers have their rallying cry.

NHL dean of discipline Brendan Shanahan has done it. He has suspended the Flyers’ Claude Giroux for one game for a hit to the head of the Devils’ Dainius Zubrus in Game 4 of their playoff series Sunday night. Shanahan has suspended a superstar player with no discipline history, for a hit that did not cause an injury, for a game in which his team can be eliminated.

Brave new world.

I didn’t think the hit was worth a suspension -- because Giroux did not have a history, and because Zubrus did not sustain a significant injury, and because the 6-foot-5 Zubrus was kind of leaning over already -- it was the only way the 5-foot-11 Giroux could have contacted Zubrus’ face with his shoulder. There was all of that, which made it a close call -- and there was Giroux’s status on his team and the precariousness of his team’s current circumstances, trailing three games to one in the series.

It didn’t matter. It was going to be close, and Shanahan has made a clear statement here. His willingness to suspend a star without a rap sheet, on a hit without an injury, at such a crucial moment in a playoff series, will send shockwaves around the NHL -- make no mistake. If this is the way it is going to be, we really have crossed a threshold.

Shanahan typically releases a video explanation after such a decision, and it was comprehensive in its analysis. He placed a lot of emphasis on the entirety of Giroux's shift, which was fraught with obvious frustration about a call that the officials did not make after Devils goaltender Marty Brodeur played the puck outside of the designated area. And, make no mistake: Giroux did hit Zubrus in the head, and that is against the rules, and he was properly penalized and the situation was properly reviewed by the NHL.

But we have broken new ground here. The clean history did not matter. The injury situation did not matter. What have sometimes been considered as mitigating factors were not enough to mitigate things for Giroux in an undeniably crucial situation for his team.

In my mind, the decision was too harsh. It was close, but given everything -- and, yes, for better or worse, that does include the fact it is an elimination game -- it seemed to suggest a fine and and a warning, not a suspension.

But, no. And now the Flyers will undoubtedly attempt to summon up whatever emotion they can as they try to overcome the loss of their best player. And the rest of the league will attempt to recalibrate their expectations for discipline the next time.

Brave new world.

MORE: Here are some additional thoughts, after a couple of hours of thinking about it.

It was after Game 5 of the Flyers-Penguins series. It was, you might remember, the night was the Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin was completing his second straight game of searching and destroying and pretty obviously trying to hurt an array of Flyers players.

In Game 4, there was the sneaky elbow that gave Flyers defenseman Nicklas Grossmann a concussion. In Game 5, there were two incidents: an unnecessary late hit on Brayden Schenn and an assault on Sean Couturier that, if it wasn’t a head shot, was within millimeters of being one. The Grossmann play went unseen by officials. Both of the Game 5 hits were penalized. And afterward, in the corridors below Consol Energy Center, I sought out Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren.

There was a time when it was the general manager’s job to work the officials between games of a playoff series. I was wondering if Holmgren wanted to play on the subject of Malkin. I asked the question, and he thought for a second, and then he shook his head and said, “No.”

Some of that is the man’s personality, not given to histrionics. Some of it, too, was his notion of what it is to be a good citizen in the NHL in 2012, and what it is to respect Brendan Shanahan and the whole discipline process. But there also was the sense, although he never said it, that Holmgren also was operating under the mental rules that have been a part of hockey forever.

That is: that the Penguins were on the edge of elimination, and Malkin is a star player, and those three unspoken words:

It’s the playoffs.

It is why I did not think Giroux would be suspended for his hit on Zubrus. I get that Giroux hit him in the head. But he has no history, and Zubrus was not hurt, and so many other prominent players appeared to receive the benefit of the doubt from Shanahan. Malkin did, a couple of times. The Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin did when he hit the Rangers’ Dan Girardi. The Penguins’ James Neal did when he leveled Couturier.

So why not Giroux? Why did he not receive the benefit of the doubt? Is he not a star, too? Is his team not in a desperate elimination situation, too, just as Malkin was when he spent two games wreaking havoc in the land?

The answer, apparently, is that Giroux’s was such a clear head shot that the league could not overlook it, and that the others were more body checks that involved incidental contact to the head. It is a difference without a distinction when you are the one laid out on the ice, but it is a crucial difference for the NHL.

You watch Shanahan on the video reviews and you almost never disagree with anything he says as he analyzes the pictures. Yes, Giroux was outwardly frustrated. Yes, he hit Zubrus in the head -- even if Zubrus was kind of bent over. It isn’t the analysis, but the conclusion.

If not Ovechkin, and if not Malkin, why Giroux? Because it is not as if any of them were innocent. That's the point.

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NEWARK, N.J. -- Claude Giroux has become the Flyers’ leader, and no one questions it. He is them and they are him and that is that, at least for now.

When Giroux is the best player on the ice, they beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round of the playoffs. When he is quiet, they lose two straight games and fall behind the New Jersey Devils in the second round.

When he assists on a power play goal and persists on a shorthanded goal in the first period on Sunday night, the Flyers remain alive in a game in which they should be dead. Eventually, they were dead, by a final score of 4-2. They now trail the Devils by three games to one in the series.

But the issue has become even bigger than that, and more worrisome. Because he is them and they are him, and now there is a chance the Flyers will be without Giroux for Game 5 of the series after he was penalized at 19:56 of the second period for a head shot delivered with his shoulder against the Devils’ Dainius Zubrus.

To attempt to predict what Brendan Shanahan, the NHL’s dean of discipline, might do with this is a waste of energy. All we can know for sure is that it will be scrutinized. The guess here is that there will be no suspension, and that there should be no suspension -- that the hit was deserving of a penalty and nothing more.

But who knows? And who knows what effect a suspension might have on a Flyers team that has now been outplayed in three consecutive games.

Giroux has no history of discipline issues with the league, which will work in his favor. Zubrus returned to the game and did not appear to be injured seriously -- in fact, scoring the final New Jersey goal into an empty net -- which also will work in Giroux's favor. The fact that Zubrus, who is 6-foot-5, was hit in the head by the shoulder of a player who is 5-foot-11, means that Zubrus was already bent over -- and that should work in Giroux’s favor, too. It wasn’t as if he reached up with an elbow.

But who knows?

The problem is that it is very obvious that Giroux skated a long way in anger before the hit. He was carping with the officials seconds before, furious as he skated up the ice, apparently because Devils goaltender Marty Brodeur illegally played the puck outside of the trapezoid behind the net without being whistled for a penalty.

So there is that, and there is the penalty call itself: “illegal check to head.” You do not see that one every day.

Again, it was not a clean play. But it did not seem to rise to the level of a suspension. Then again, I don’t watch suspension video for a living.

So, we will see -- as if the Flyers didn’t already have enough to worry about.

NEWARK, N.J. -- For people who play hockey at this time of year, the desperate search is for victory in any of its many shapes and forms: pretty, ugly, does not matter. For people who watch hockey and write about hockey at this time of year, the quest is for a narrative to explain it all, to validate every personal preconception and cover every eventuality.

So far, through three games of Flyers and Devils, that story cannot yet be written. The plot has not yet been fleshed out, and preconception has been turned on its head. Each team has taken turns making the other side look slow and inept, and there still is no obvious explanation for why the momentum has switched and then switched back and then switched again.

There is only this:

For the Flyers, a sense of creeping danger.

The game was 2-2 after the second period. When Zach Parise scored at 7:29 to give the New Jersey the lead, it seemed as if the Devils were on the verge of grabbing control of the series. When Danny Briere did what Danny Briere does -- that is, score a goal in the spring, this time by choppingj at a bouncing rebound and making enough contact to get the puck past Marty Brodeur -- it was tied again at 3-3. Ebb was flow and flow was ebb and the only certainty was that someone was ultimately going to be knocked over by a wave they did not see coming.

And then it happened: In overtime, a thrilling overtime, the Devils' Alexei Ponikarovsky banged in his own rebound at 17:21 and New Jersey took the game, 4-3. The Devils now lead the series, two games to one.

And now, for the Flyers, it gets interesting.

In about 10 periods of hockey, the Flyers have dominated about 3 1/2 of them and the Devils have dominated about 4 1/2 of them. There has not been a lot to choose from the two sides, when you tote it up that way. The Flyers have yet to match the dominance that the Devils showed in Game 2 on Tuesday night, but when they have been good, they have been very good.

The second period Thursday night was crucial for the Flyers. After being run out of the Wells Fargo Center in the last two periods of Game 2, they again were dominated completely in the first period of Game 3. The two-day break solved none of their problems. They looked slow, and very tentative trying to bring the puck out of their zone against the Devils’ forecheck.

Two periods on one day is still only one bad day. But the carryover into Game 3 threatened to become a baffling trend, one for which there was no obvious answer. The Flyers had to re-establish something, and quickly, or risk being run out of a series that seemed theirs for the taking after they dominated Game 1.

It is why the second period was so important -- because the Flyers did re-establish themselves, both in a physical way and a speed way. The passes out of their end were quicker and the neutral zone became friendlier as a result. They had nine shots in the period to the Devils’ four. They got the tying goal from Matt Carle, after a nice pass from Jakub Voracek. They thought they got the go-ahead goal on a power play from James van Riemsdyk, but it was immediately disallowed because of a whiff of goaltender interference by Brayden Schenn against Brodeur. Then again, the Flyers never should have been on the power play in the first place because the officials missed the fact that Ilya Kovalchuk did not shoot the puck out of the rink for delay of game, but rather deflected it off of Matt Read’s stick.

Whatever. The point was, the Flyers did stabilize things. They did re-find their legs. The third period still somewhat belonged to the Devils, but it was very competitive. There was some equilibrium. And then, into overtime it went.

It was a long game. It still looks like it is going to be a long series. Other than that, it is hard to know what to say.

Narrative to follow.

Wow, were the Flyers bad on Tuesday night.

A team built on emotion showed little.

A group schooled in aggression rolled over.

A Flyers team that is better than the New Jersey Devils, and that got a long stretch of great goaltending from Ilya Bryzgalov, nonetheless finds itself hip-deep now in a playoff series in which it has surrendered the home-ice advantage. Such are the consequences of a 4-1 loss at home that was truly shocking for the Flyers -- not necessarily for the result but for their complete absence of a pulse for most of the evening.

At the end of the second period, as the Flyers left the ice to a low rumble of boos from the crowd at the Wells Fargo Center, the Devils had to have been wondering exactly what it was going to take. Playing without injured start Ilya Kovalchuk, they had just dominated the Flyers for about the first 19 minutes of the period and were still trailing by 1-0.

The turnaround in the game had been stunning. The Flyers came out trailing sparks. Rookie Matt Read scored just 2 minutes, 53 seconds into the game, and the Flyers’ pressure remained relentless for several minutes after that. But a couple of penalties stopped their momentum, and they could not get it back. It is hard to understand how it could happen -- dominating one minute, paralyzed the next -- but there it was.

The second period was as one-sided as most college football games in September. The only reason Flyers survived was goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, our current favorite child of scorn. Whatever your opinion, you have to acknowledge this much: when the Flyers have needed him the most -- as things began to crumble against Pittsbrugh; in the first period of Game 1, when the Flyers were shaking off a week’s worth of rust; in the second period Tuesday night -- the guy has been very good.

And, yes, your ears did not deceive you. The chant from the crowd was “Bryz...Bryz...Bryz...” And, yes, it sounds as rhythmic as it reads, which is not at all.

The Flyers did not get a shot in the second period until 1:27 remained -- when they had 6 men on the ice during a delayed penalty call. They finished the period with two shots. And the question in everyone’s head for the next 17 minutes, as they cleaned the ice, was about what kind of carryover there might be in the third period.

Would the Flyers snap out of it?

Would the Devils snap out of frustration?

The answers: no and no.

The Devils finally tied the score, in a 4 on 4 situation, when Adam Larsson fired a wrist shot into the top corner of the net, high to Bryzgalov’s glove side. After which, the Flyers did wake up a bit and the game was much more even. At the same time, the Devils still had the best of the chances as the third period began to bleed away -- and then it happen. On another New Jersey assault, Bryzgalov did a nice job poking a puck away from Zach Parise, but David Clarkson banged in the rebound.

The Devils had a 2-1 lead that they thoroughly deserved. Then, at 14:01, Travis Zajac made it 3-1. Bryce Salvador scored again later, into an empty net.

And now comes the challenge for the Flyers.

Which has to begin with, you know, waking up.

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The Flyers won a game, just a game, just one of the four games that they will need in order to get past the New Jersey Devils in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But the way it happened should leave the Devils wondering -- because this was a great chance for them to take the series opener, and they didn't.

Think about it. The Devils had the first 11 shots of the game -- the Flyers didn't have one for almost exactly 10 minutes -- but they only had a 1-0 lead at the end of the first period. Part of that was because Ilya Bryzgalov was very good at the start. Part of it was because the Devils weren't good enough.

Then the Flyers came back. They began to take over the play in a very significant way in the second period, and they only gave it up sporadically after that. Their forecheck was relentless. Whatever rustiness they had acquired over a week-long layoff following their first-round victory over Pittsburgh was gone. If Bryzgalov hadn't allowed Petr Sykora to rifle a shot between his pads in the third period, the Flyers would have won in regulation.

But the Devils could not take advantage of Bryz, just as they could not take advantage of the Flyers' slow start. You do not advance in the playoffs if you do not take advantage of opportunites, and the Devils whiffed on both of those in Game 1.

Then there are the side issues. Danny Briere, with two goals -- including the game-winner in OT -- continues to be a post-season magician; bad for the Devils. Claude Giroux, with a slapshot goal from the half-boards on a power play, continues to lead by leading; bad for the Devils. Ilya Kovalchuk, the Devils' premier scoring threat, did not have a shot on goal and was a minus-2.

Repeat after me:

Bad for the Devils.

Someone asked Devils coach Peter DeBoer about taking too many penalties (six), and he said that wasn't the reason the Devils lost. He said, "They took the game over in the second half. And when you're just hanging on, that's what happens."

One game, yes. But it seemed -- for many reasons, but mostly because the Flyers were able to dictate their style of play -- like more than that.