It goes without saying that the Flyers were touched by the story.

About 90 minutes before last night's game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Flyers coach John Stevens addressed his team, as usual. It was the start of the Eastern Conference finals, and there were hockey things to talk about. But Stevens wanted to make sure that the players knew what Matt Liczbinski had done at the funeral, about how they had touched a man and his family and maybe given them just a few seconds of comfort in their tragedy.

"As you would expect, it was a pretty emotional thing," a person who was in the Flyers' dressing room said.

The Flyers plan a public tribute to Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski at Game 3 of the series on Tuesday night at the Wachovia Center. *