SERIES EVENED IN PHILLY

RELENTLESS FLYERS TIE STANLEY CUP

The Stanley Cup finals are this close: the Flyers and the Blackhawks have won each of their home games, the Flyers lead in goals scored by one (15-14), and neither team seems able to take control of the series. “What was once a best-of-seven series is now a best-of-three,” said Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger after a masterly performance in Philadelphia’s 5-3 victory in Game 4. He went plus-4, boosting his overall differential to a series-high plus-7. The view was pretty much the same on the other side. “This series is wide open now,” said Blackhawks Coach Joel Quenneville, looking ahead to Game 5 in Chicago on Sunday night. “We’ve got to take advantage of our home ice.” The Flyers won their seventh straight home game, extending their postseason record here to 9-1. Jeff Carter’s empty-net goal with 25 seconds left meant that, for the first time in the series, a game was decided by more than one goal. Dave Bolland and Brian Campbell scored in the latter stages of the third period for Chicago, turning what had been a comfortable 4-1 Flyers lead into a tense last four minutes of Blackhawks pressure. But the Blackhawks remained vexed by the Wachovia Center. Friday’s loss was their 10th straight in Philadelphia — eight in the regular season, two in the playoffs — and Chicago has not won here since Nov. 9, 1996, in the building’s inaugural season. It was also the first time this postseason that the Blackhawks have lost two games in a row. The first three games of the series were razor’s-edge close, the teams tied or separated by one goal for 96 percent of the time. It looked like it might go that way again Friday night after Patrick Sharp scored at 18 minutes 32 seconds of the first period. It was his second goal of the series, and it halved Chicago’s deficit to 2-1. But just 51 seconds later, Claude Giroux sneaked undetected from behind the Chicago net, and defenseman Kimmo Timonen found him unguarded behind Blackhawks goalie Antti Niemi. That enabled Giroux to score his second goal in as many games, and one of the easiest of his career. The Flyers struck first, when Mike Richards scored unassisted at 4:45 on a power play on the kind of play that occurs when friends rent out a rink for an hour to have a game. Chicago defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson was carrying the puck behind his own net when Richards simply stole it from behind and backhanded it past a surprised Niemi. It was his first goal of the series. Philadelphia made the score 2-0 at 14:48 in part because Chicago forward Dustin Byfuglien, who had a dreadful game misplaying the puck, tried to clear his zone by sending it the wrong way around the boards. It was easily picked off and held in. Then Hjalmarsson lost it in front — his second costly mistake of the game — and Matt Carle pounced for an unassisted goal from 12 feet. Ville Leino, who was flattened twice in the first period and had to spend 10 minutes recovering on the bench, scored to make it 4-1 in the third period with a shot that bounced in off the back of Chicago’s Kris Versteeg. But then Chicago rallied. Bolland scored while the Blackhawks had a two-man advantage with 7:59 left, and Campbell drew Chicago to 4-3 with 4:10 remaining. Beyond his plus-4 mark in the game, Pronger stood out with another provocation to add to his puck-swiping antics at the end of Games 1 and 2. Midway through the second period, the Blackhawks were swarming the Philadelphia net, but Pronger induced Sharp to slash him, taking a penalty and short-circuiting the Chicago attack. Flyers goalie Michael Leighton stopped 32 of 35 shots. Niemi turned aside 27 of 31. Afterward, Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette was asked what the difference was between the series’s first two games in Chicago and the two games in Philadelphia. “For us, I don’t think anything,” he said. Either way, the Flyers have climbed back from a two-game series deficit. They fought back from a three-game deficit to beat the Boston Bruins in the second round after making the playoffs on the last day of the regular season. “No matter how deep a hole we dig for ourselves, there’s something about this team that we always fight back,” Richards said. (NY Times)