Flyers-Penguins scouting report

Flyers: Philadelphia's top line, composed of Claude Giroux, Scott Hartnell and Jaromir Jagr, can skate, score and shine as well as any line Pittsburgh can throw at them. It is that line's secondary scoring that will be a question mark. Danny Briere is a proven playoff performer, with the fifth-most career playoff points active this spring, but Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds, Jake Voracek and Matt Read have limited to no playoff experience.

Penguins: It's tough to question the Penguins' top-flight talent, with likely Hart Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby leading the charge. James Neal has put together a tremendous season. After that, Pascal Dupuis has played out of his mind, carrying a 17-game point streak into the playoffs. Chris Kunitz posted career highs in points and goals, and has 15 points in 19 career games against the Flyers.

Edge: Penguins

Flyers: They do not have Chris Pronger. They do not have Andrej Meszaros. And Kimmo Timonen is playing at about 80 percent health with a sore lower back. Yet, with a healthy Nick Grossmann in the lineup, they will be a better unit, top-to-bottom, than the Penguins. Matt Carle had a tough March, but Braydon Coburn stepped up to balance out their weakness. Grossmann has added much-needed snarl in net. Two Cup winners, Pavel Kubina and Andreas Lilja, round out the top six with Marc-Andre Bourdon.

Penguins: Pittsburgh's one weakness is on defense. The Penguins have a world-class, all-around star in Kris Letang. His partner, Brooks Orpik, has been a thorn in the Flyers' side. But it's all downhill after that for the Penguins. The Flyers have tormented Zbynek Michalek this season, as he was on the ice for six out of the last 10 goals they scored against Pittsburgh. Paul Martin has had a tough season but rebounded. Now, Matt Niskanen is likely out for Game 1 and the Pens will need to fill in with rookie Brian Strait, who has only 12 games of NHL experience under his belt.

Edge: Flyers

Flyers: Ilya Bryzgalov said repeatedly this week that he does not have a crystal ball. He is the Flyers' biggest question mark heading into the first round. Will we see the Bryzgalov of the first 5 months of the season, or the masked man who dazzled in March? After suffering a chip fracture in his right foot on March 26, he played in only two of the Flyers' final six games. He had one solid outing against Buffalo in the second to last game of the season, but everyone wants to know whether that one test is enough to get him back in the frame of mind that garnered him 11 wins and four shutouts since March.

Penguins: Marc-Andre Fleury is a proven Stanley Cup winner. But the Flyers have gotten the best of him this season. Fleury has performed worse against only Buffalo in the Eastern Conference this season. He posted an unsightly 3.41 goals against-average against the Flyers with an .852 save percentage, stopping 130 of 149 shots faced. And that's not a small sample size, either, since he played more minutes only against the Rangers and Islanders this season.

Edge: Penguins

Flyers: Peter Laviolette is the master of the timeout. Need anything more be said? Laviolette has been one of the Flyers' big reasons for playoff success. He seems to have learned from the goaltending carousel that plagued the team last spring, saying and doing all of the right things with Ilya Bryzgalov recently. Laviolette's use of the timeout in this series, especially if the Penguins begin to control the play as they can, could help put the Flyers back on track.

Penguins: Dan Bylsma has won a Stanley Cup before, too - and more recently than Peter Laviolette. For all the talk about Bylsma's magic, weaving wins with Crosby and Malkin out, Pittsburgh has won only one playoff series since that Cup. Bylsma's tactics - whether they involve using five forwards on the power play or mixing and matching lines - will surely be under the microscope in this round.

Edge: Flyers

Flyers: For as much talk as the Penguins' power play has received, you'd have a hard time believing the Flyers finished with an identical 19.7 percent success rate over 82 games. The Penguins are 6 percentage points better shorthanded; their No. 3 leaguewide ranking dwarfs the Flyers' 17th-place finish. The Flyers' penalty kill, however, closed the year on a 57-for-66 run (86.3 percent) over the last quarter of the regular season.

Penguins: The one time Crosby and Malkin are likely guaranteed to skate together is on the power play. Pittsburgh has flirted with five forwards on its and may well do that again if Steve Sullivan is back and healthy. That could present the Flyers' opportunistic penalty-killers, like Claude Giroux and Matt Read, with unique breaks and potentially series-altering goals.

Edge: Push

Flyers: If there is one thing about the Flyers in this series, it's that they aren't the least bit hesitant entering Consol Energy Center. They are 6-1-0 in the building since they opened it on Oct. 7, 2010. The one loss was Saturday, in which they rested their starting goaltender and top scorer, and didn't even attempt to win. The Flyers are also 8-3-1 against the Penguins over the last two seasons. They are confident they can win in this series, and there might even be a seed of doubt in the Penguins.

Penguins: Much has been made about the Flyers' experience in this series. Five Flyers rookies are making their playoff debut on Wednesday night. They accounted for 445 games played this season. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, has 11 players from the 2009 Stanley Cup squad. The Penguins' rookies played only 63 games. For my money, the ability to win away from home trumps playoff experience. Plus, the pressure on the Penguins - not just to win the first round, but to win the Stanley Cup - is enormous. By this time of the year, there are no more rookies in the NHL.

Edge: Flyers