Flyers' Laviolette says pressure is on the Bruins

Flyers coach Peter Laviolette, playing psychology games, insisted again Tuesday that the pressure in this playoff series is squarely on the Boston Bruins.

Yep, the same Bruins who have a two-games-to-none lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

The same Bruins who won the first two games on the road.

The same Bruins whose acrobatic goalie, Tim Thomas, seems intent on sending the Flyers to their favorite golf courses. Soon.

To hear Laviolette explain it, the Flyers can now play loose and relaxed - like they did last year, when they were down three games to none against Boston before making an epic comeback.

"We just put our comfortable slippers on," Laviolette said at the Skate Zone in Voorhees on Tuesday before the team's flight to Boston, where Game 3 will be played Wednesday at 7:05 p.m.

After Monday's draining, 3-2 overtime defeat, Laviolette said there was "a real expectation for the Bruins to win the series now, so it relieves the pressure a little bit, and it certainly mounts on them."

In the spirit of Joe Namath and Mark Messier - athletes who guaranteed playoff victories - Laviolette later added that the Flyers were "going to win the game" Wednesday at TD Garden.

On Tuesday, after his team had a meeting but did not practice, Laviolette continued the same theme. With conviction.

"I think there's a 100 percent belief in here that we can go to Boston and win the first game," he said. "There's a lot of guys who have battled through different situations and been able to win big games, so I have no reason to doubt [Wednesday] will be different."

Laviolette was asked if he talked to his players about last year's stirring comeback over Boston.

"I don't think we got into that necessarily, per se," he said. "You know, we are going into Boston to have some fun. We just put our comfortable slippers on. It's time to go in there. Like I said, the pressure really gets alleviated a bit. Last year, you're down, 0-3. This year, you're down, 0-2. Back-to-back series against the same team. Technically, that's 0-5. I'm not sure that any team in the history of sports has ever come back from 0-5."

Not unless it was an 11-game series.

"So we're just going in there to have some fun," he added.

The Flyers, despite losing the first two games at home, seemed upbeat. The fact they fired 54 shots - and controlled a lot of Game 2 - was the reason for their optimism.

"I think we're fine," goalie Brian Boucher said. "We know we played a pretty good game [Monday], especially in the second half of the game. We had our chances, but overall, we know in a series you need to win four games. We're not where we want to be right now, but we still feel pretty good about ourselves."

Claude Giroux said the Flyers would treat Game 3 as if it were a Game 7.

"I think we have to," he said. "Coming back from 0-3 is pretty hard, even if we did do it last year. We don't want to put ourselves in that situation. The game we played [Monday], we have to keep that same mind-set and be aggressive."

Can the Flyers draw confidence from the fact they overcame a 3-0 deficit against Boston last year?

"There's an example that you need to win four games to win a series, and you're not out until that's the case," Boucher said. "There have been a lot of times in history where teams have been down 0-2 and have come back. Our focus is on Game 3, to get one game and get some life and move on from there."

"It's a different year, different teams basically for both sides," winger James van Riemsdyk said. "You can learn from those types of experience, but by the end of the day it's a totally different bag of worms."

Boston coach Claude Julien said his team was using last year's playoff collapse "as a learning tool."

It was the Bruins who made a comeback in Round 1 this year, perhaps saving Julien's job. They lost the first two games at home against Montreal, then won the series in seven games.