This Flyers team not ready to repeat history
BOSTON - Yes, the Flyers appear poised to repeat history. No, they do not seem capable of coming back from a three-games-to-none deficit two years in a row against the Boston Bruins.
BOSTON - Yes, the Flyers appear poised to repeat history. No, they do not seem capable of coming back from a three-games-to-none deficit two years in a row against the Boston Bruins.
The history this team seems prepared to repeat is more like 2006, when the Flyers faded badly in a first-round loss to Buffalo. Or 2009, when the Pittsburgh Penguins eliminated them in six first-round games. Going back a bit further, this feels a lot like 2003, when Ottawa outclassed the Flyers in a second-round series.
It does not feel like 2010. A year ago, after losing Game 3 at home, the Flyers were angry. They felt they'd played very well in spite of the final scores. They believed that if they just kept that up, things would go their way eventually.
At the time, it sounded like frustration. It turned out to be determination.
After their wretched effort Wednesday night, there wasn't much defiance. The Flyers were beaten soundly, beaten up physically, and they looked and sounded like a beaten team. After three games, they know this Boston team is better, tougher, and more committed - than last year's Bruins, certainly, but also better, tougher, and more committed than the Flyers.
It is an ugly truth about this team that it failed to show up for Games 1 and 3 of this series. That wasn't the case before last year's ultimate comeback.
"It's an awful lot to expect [another comeback]," Flyers chairman Ed Snider said after watching the 5-1 blowout. "Boston's playing very well. We're going to have to step up our game in order to compete with them. I don't think there was a lack of urgency. I just think that Boston's playing really well, and we weren't quite as prepared as we should have been for what they did in the beginning of the game."
What they did was score two very quick goals way too easily, just as the Flyers did at home in Game 2. But while Boston answered with two first-period goals Monday, eventually winning in overtime, the Flyers never really challenged the Bruins. In fact, they spent much of the rest of the game getting up and dusting ice chips off their pants after big hits.
"We talked about weathering the storm, coming in their building," Danny Briere said. "We knew they were going to come out strong. That was the game right there."
"It shouldn't be the end of the world," defenseman Sean O'Donnell said. "It seemed to deflate us a little bit. . . . You're not going to win playoff hockey that way. We got what we deserved."
If coach Peter Laviolette, captain Mike Richards, and defenseman/oracle Chris Pronger earned a lot of praise for their roles in last year's comeback, they will have to share a like amount of blame when this series reaches its conclusion. That could happen as soon as Friday night.
Pronger, of course, just isn't playing. The Flyers' childish handling of injury information clearly hasn't flummoxed the Bruins. All it has done is create an air of uncertainty around a key player. The bottom line is hard to miss: When Pronger has played in the postseason, the Flyers' record is 2-1. When he hasn't played, they are 2-5.
Richards has not been a factor in this series. Not on the ice, clearly, and apparently not off the ice, either. If anyone is leading this team, there isn't much evidence.
As for the coach, he has proven himself enough to earn the benefit of the doubt. But you wonder about coaches with his intense style becoming less effective over time - it apparently happened in Carolina, where he was fired two years after winning the Stanley Cup. It would not reflect well on this group of players if it is happening here and now.
Laviolette has been handicapped, of course, by the goaltenders handed him by general manager Paul Holmgren. Brian Boucher was not to blame for those first two goals, although he was free to make a good save on either one. But while Tim Thomas shut down the Flyers after two quick goals Monday, Boucher gave up two more. The fourth was inexcusable, and he got yanked yet again.
It has become the stuff of bad jokes, the way the Flyers have shuttled goalies in and out of these playoff games. It is no way to win anything, let alone a Stanley Cup.
Laviolette just kept hoping someone would seize the moment. No one did. His best chance for Game 4 is to start rookie Sergei Bobrovsky and light a candle in the church of his choice.
"We're not going to win four games on Friday," Briere said. "We have to win one game and go from there."
After Wednesday, this team seems further from one win than last year's did from four wins.