Daily News Online Extra: For the Flyers, the courage to continue

BOSTON -- The greatness of the Olympic hockey tournament is unquestioned, high-level athletics played on an unmatched plane. But there is nothing like the Stanley Cup tournament. As a total measure of men and teams, of skill and desire and courage most of all, nothing in professional sports can match these 8 weeks.

I have written a line similar to this before and some people have scoffed; no matter. It was true then and it is true now: it takes more courage to skate one shift in a Stanley Cup elimination game than it takes to play any other professional sport. One shift, no kidding.

This is written on the morning after Game 5 of the Flyers-Bruins playoff series. Final score: Flyers 4, Bruins 0. There is nothing scarier than a team getting run out of its own building in a Stanley Cup playoff game, and everybody knows it -- because pride still matters, and because messages are still routinely delivered in these kinds of hockey games, and because, well, you know.

The second half of that game was hell, just the kind of brutality that none of us really understands because we don't compete for big things like the Stanley Cup in our everyday lives. The Flyers had closed their deficit in the series from 3-0 to 3-2, and now everyone found themselves in complete survival mode.

And so, Boston's Steve Begin plasters the Flyers' Claude Giroux into the boards, putting Giroux on the bench for the third period and leaving everyone to wonder if he has some kind of a head injury; the team won't say.

And so, the Flyers' Mike Richards continues being Mike Richards, hitting everything that moves, and Boston's Marc Savard and Milan Lucic combine to jump him and pound him before the rescue party arrives (led by Simon Gagne, of all people).

It is where we are now. This series, like most series, is becoming a battle of attrition -- and let's just say the fellas are attritting with some alacrity. Winning is now about surviving and everybody knows it -- and tempers are beyond frayed. For his part, Savard -- coming off of a concussion to rejoin his team in this series -- is clearly furious at Richards for what he viewed as a hit from behind in the third period. (The officials called no penalty.) You will remember that, earlier in the series, it was Richards who knocked Boston's David Krejci out of the competition with a fractured wrist on a clean, devastating open-ice hit.

After the game, Savard said, "I was just facing the boards again and enough is enough of that. So it's a reaction, part of hockey, I guess."

Part of hockey...

"I just got fired up," Savard said, explaining how he and Lucic reacted by tag-teaming Richards. "Like I got hit the other night in Philly, from behind, and then I was facing the glass again in the same situation (Monday night). And I look back at (Krecji) and enough is enough. So I don't know, that's all."

Asked then if he thinks Richards is trying to hurt somebody, Savard said, "I don't know. That's the way he plays. It's part of his demeanor. He'll never change. So I don't know."

He'll never change...

It is the sport that will never change. You do not win this tournament without people like Richards. From the safe distance that we all watch, the violence is thrilling. To be in the middle of it must be frightening. This series especially, with two flawed teams taking these wild emotional swings at each other, must test people in ways that few in athletics are tested.

So when you see the Begin hit on Giroux -- he received 2 minutes for boarding after face-planting the Flyers forward into the glass -- you know exactly what is going on. When you see Giroux so clearly struggling to gather himself after the hit, and then don't even see him sitting on the bench in the third period, you worry about the after-effects. But that is what this tournament has always been.

After the game, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren termed the Begin hit "dangerous." But unless he changed his mind after sleeping on it, you do not get the sense that the Flyers are going to complain to the league in any serious fashion. Because this is part of it and it has always been part of it -- and as the weeks and the rounds unfold, the lines get blurred beyond all recognition sometimes.

With that, the last word goes to the only Flyers player who has won a Stanley Cup but one of many who seem to have grown to understand what it takes, shift by brutal shift.

"It is part of the game," Chris Pronger said, simply. "We are going to Game 6."