If I were home right now, I’d be watching playoff hockey. Despite what the song may claim, it’s not Christmas that’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. 16 teams try to get 16 wins over four rounds to capture the Cup.
The Flyers have been a pretty good playoff team in general, in terms of appearances and performance. According to TSN, “The Flyers have had an extraordinary run the last three playoff years. They sit third in the NHL over that span in terms of number of playoff rounds and games, behind only the back-to-back Stanley Cup finalists Detroit Red Wings and Penguins.” That’s not too shabby.
Playoff hockey brings the kind of drama and stories that transcend sport, and this year is no different. The Flyers needed a shootout victory on the last day of the season to even get a playoff berth. Talk about coming down to the wire. Heavily favored as Cup finalists at the start of the season, the team was derailed through inconsistent play and injuries. The Hockey News said that all the Flyers would need is “good, not great” goaltending to perform, and they’ve gotten it from two different netminders this post-season.
Originally the signed as a starter, the team lost Ray Emery in winter for the rest of the season. At that point, Mike Leighton, picked up off of waivers, took over the job. When he was injured, the Flyers relied on the familiar face of Brian Boucher in the pipes as the third-stringer quietly lead them to the post-season by making one last save in a shootout versus the Rangers to give them the #7 seed. The Flyers comeback and unlikely success of giant-killer Montreal highlights the unpredictability of our sport.
In the post-season, they made quick work of former playoff rival New Jersey before going on to meet sixth seeded Boston and promptly going down 3 games to 0. That they would be perfect for four games is almost impossible; that they’d come back to win the deciding game 7 after being down 3-0 before the first period finished is even more so. Their 4-3 win on Friday night capped off a tremendous comeback that only three teams have ever achieved in the history of the NHL.
And you know what? We deserved it. Philadelphia sports teams and Flyers fans have had more than their fair share of disappointments. Whether it’s the 2006 lost season, or blowing a 3-1 series lead to New Jersey after Eric Lindros got another concussion, or the two series losses to the rival Pittsburgh Penguins as we had to watch Sidney Crosby lift the Cup, or the game 7 loss to Tampa Bay. Most of my Flyers post-season memories are sad ones. For once, it feels so nice to be on the other side of history.
My awful internet connection and questionable electricity cooperated enough for me to watch the game in its entirety, right up until it ended at 4:30AM here. I felt the goose bumps rise as the final seconds ticked off the clock. I felt the same feeling in my stomach as I did when Simon Gagne scored in game 6 of the Tampa Bay series all those years ago: that perhaps this was a team of destiny who was capable of something more.
Of course the Flyers went on to lose game 7 against Tampa Bay thanks largely to the play of Nikolai Khabibulin. What comes next for the Flyers is still very up in the air. Debates have raged about whether Montreal is really talented or just really lucky. My guess is that it takes more than luck to beat the #1 seeded team and then dispose of last year’s Cup champions in back-to-back rounds. And there’s the overwhelming belief that the Cup will go to a Western team and that the Eastern Conference’s two remaining teams are flukes.
But in a playoff stretch that will now see the #7 and #8 seeds faceoff for a ticket to the finals, anything is possible. The only thing we can know for sure is that we will probably never see another feat as epic as the one the Flyers pulled off in this past week. And that is something truly special no matter what happens.
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