Rich Hofmann: Flyers rewrite the history books

BOSTON - Oh, the stories they will tell. Old men, fat men, back for some kind of old-timers function. After the public part of it, gathered together in somebody's hotel suite, bathtub full of beer and ice. Sitting on the floor, night turning to day, security stopping by and asking them to quiet the laughter. Stories, more stories, some even true.

And then one of them will say, "How did we ever do that?"

And then another will answer, "I still have no idea."

It is a night they will talk about forever, and the Flyers all know it. For the record, it was May 14, 2010. It was the night when the Flyers did the impossible.

The bare bones will be repeated often enough that it will become Philadelphia sporting shorthand. It will be this: "Down, 3-0, in the series, down, 3-0, in Game 7." It will forever be the mirror image of this: "Up 6 1/2 with 12 to play."

No one in TD Garden had ever seen anything like it. No one might ever see anything like it ever again. The Flyers trailed the Boston Bruins in their Eastern Conference semifinal series by 3-0 and came back to tie it at 3-3. The Flyers then trailed the Bruins by 3-0 in Game 7 and came back to tie it at 3-3.

And then Simon Gagne - their poster child for resilience, coming back early from a broken toe to score the overtime game-winner in Game 4 - scored the series-winner on a power play with about 7 minutes left in the third period, leaving everyone with little but dumbfounded cliches.

"This is a fantastic achievement in every single way that you can imagine," Flyers chairman Ed Snider said. "I mean, it's like a storybook . . . These guys are unbelievable. It's incredible. They never quit.

"I never, ever, in my wildest imagination thought that we could spot the other team three goals in their building and come back and beat them, 4-3. I've never seen a team like this.

"I've seen a lot of teams. Our Stanley Cup teams, I don't want to [denigrate that]. But let's say in the last X number of years, this team has just - I don't care what happens. They have just done such an incredible job, it's unbelievable."

A cold line of type in the Stanley Cup record books will never be able to do it justice. The fact that the Flyers are the first NHL team to overcome an 0-3 series deficit in 35 years, and only the third team in history, is a mouthful that still cannot begin to portray the emotional swings that defined a fortnight, and then the finale.

On the one side, you had a Flyers team propelled by the momentum of three straight wins. On the other side, you had a Bruins team desperate to avoid ignominy. Desperation trumped momentum in the first period as the Bruins built a 3-0 lead, and then desperation trumped momentum again as the Flyers fought back to tie it.

The players, the fans in the building, everyone had emotional whiplash. As the third period started, you wonder how anyone on the ice could function. As Flyers captain Mike Richards said, "It was a whirlwind out there."

But then the Bruins were called for too many men on the ice, of all things, and Gagne scored on the power play. And it's funny: You never really know about a group until it is tested, and the cohesion of this group of Flyers has been questioned by people outside of their circle, and now it is impossible to portray that circle as anything but unbroken.

"I've said all along that I like our team," said Paul Holmgren, the general manager. "I like the way they've come together as a group. I think they're really a focused, tight-knit group and they have been since right around Christmastime, when things were really rock-bottom for us. We've dealt with adversity here and there but they've stuck together, and with a purpose."

So many things happened to turn the series. A lot of it, though, was the decision by Gagne to come back - in Game 4, following surgery to repair a broken toe suffered blocking a shot in the first round against New Jersey - and to do it earlier than the doctors had initially predicted.

As Holmgren said: "It's probably a little more complicated than that. But, to me, Simon is one of the best two-way players in the game. Not only can he score, but he's great defensively, he kills penalties. He's not very good at blocking shots, but that's OK. I think he brings a quiet confidence to our team. Just the fact that he came back from the injury early and was a presence in the room and on the bench, it meant a lot to the other guys."

Now, the Flyers somehow are in the conference final against Montreal. It will be a neat trick, refocusing by the start of Game 1 tomorrow night. That, though, is the job of such people as coach Peter Laviolette, Richards and veteran defenseman Chris Pronger, who has won international gold medals and a Stanley Cup and now has made history again.

"I think it just shows the relentlessness of our team and the character of our team," Pronger said. "But I don't think you can rank it until the season is done. There's still a lot of hockey left for us now. Who knows what's going to happen next?"

After last night, after outrageous history was made, the truth is that no one knows. *

Send e-mail to

hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to

http://go.philly.com/hofmann.