#365 : ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY POST : #365
FLYERS FIGHT ELIMINATION

The Philadelphia Flyers, a battered team seemingly held together only by an inexhaustible supply of athletic tape and resolve, defeated the Boston Bruins, 2-1, on Wednesday to tie their Eastern Conference semifinal series, which looked all but over seven days earlier. After losing the first three games of the series, the Flyers have won three games in a row to force a deciding seventh game Friday in Boston. Philadelphia will try to join the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and the 1975 Islanders as the only playoff teams to overcome a 3-0 series deficit. A team has lost the first three games of a Stanley Cup playoff series 162 times. Only 11 times has the trailing team won the next two, and a trailing team forced a Game 7 just six times. Philadelphia goaltender Michael Leighton stopped 30 shots. Milan Lucic scored Boston’s only goal with a minute left. Leighton played his first game in eight weeks Monday, entering after Brian Boucher sprained his knee in the second period of the Flyers’ 4-0 victory. Mike Richards polished off an extended scramble Wednesday by knocking in his fifth goal of the playoffs to give Philadelphia the lead at 6 minutes 58 seconds of the first period. “For us, it was all about the start,” Richards said. “We were going to initiate, and not sit back and see what they were going to do.” The Flyers had a power play four minutes later, but Boston forward Trent Whitfield had the best chance on a short-handed breakaway. Whitfield shoveled his shot into Leighton’s midsection, though, and the first period ended with the Flyers clinging to a one-goal lead. But the Bruins had begun to attack, taking the final five shots of the period. Although they did not score, they pushed the puck into the Philadelphia zone and stayed there. Six minutes into the second period, Boucher, in a suit and tie, was shown on the big screens at center ice. As the crowd crooned “Boosh,” he somberly waved at the cameras, then blew a kiss to the fans. That fired up the crowd, but the game had become taut and testy. Boston center Marc Savard received a high-sticking penalty with 11 seconds left on a hooking penalty on Flyers defenseman Braydon Coburn, and the action suddenly turned frenetic. Boston’s Daniel Paille elbowed Scott Hartnell 34 seconds later. What was supposed to be a lengthy two-man advantage for Philadelphia ended after only 12 seconds when Chris Pronger, the Flyers’ 6-foot-6 defenseman, knocked down the 6-9 Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara in the slot. But the Flyers still had a power play, and they scored on it. Because the Flyers had four skaters on the ice and Boston had three, Philadelphia forward Daniel Briere had lots of room to drift across the crease with the puck and wait for his best shot. He lifted a short-side shot that went over Tuukka Rask’s glove and sailed into the net. The goal, Briere’s sixth of the playoffs, gave the Flyers a 2-0 lead at 16:20 of the second period. That got a roar from the crowd, as did a message that flashed on the big screen moments later that the Pittsburgh Penguins had been eliminated from the playoffs by the Montreal Canadiens. “I don’t want to be satisfied with coming back in this series — I want the last one,” Briere said. (NY Times)