Chicago Blackhawks at Philadelphia Flyers
Chicago leads series 2-1.
Don’t call it a comeback
The Philadelphia Flyers turned heads earlier this postseason with an amazing comeback from 0-3 down to the Boston Bruins. As great as those four straight wins were, the Flyers would rather not have their backs against the wall, especially in the Stanley Cup Final.
Philadelphia is trailing the Chicago Blackhawks 2-1 in the final after taking a thrilling 4-3 overtime victory in Game 3 Wednesday night. Center Claude Giroux netted the game-winning goal less than six minutes into the extra frame.
“Any time we face adversity, we find a way to get it done,” Giroux told the Toronto Star following Game 3. “It was a big game for us. We really needed that win. I don’t think the guys wanted to come back again from being down 3-0.”
While the seventh-seeded Flyers are underdogs in the Cup final, they’ve kept up with the Blackhawks every step of the way. They lost 6-5 and 2-1 in the opening two games in Chicago.
“I think he loosened up a bit,” Philadelphia coach Peter Laviolette told the Toronto Sun about Giroux. “You have to remember it’s the Stanley Cup finals. We talked about just lightening up a little bit. At this point of the year, you know what you have to do in order to be successful. There’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of intensity. There’s a lot of competitiveness in the battles.
“If you tighten up too much, you seize up a little bit. We talked about just having some fun tonight, come out and let everything roll. I think he took that advice because he was smiling all day. He came to the rink and went out and played a great game.”
The win also improved the Flyers’ record to 8-1 inside the Wachovia Center this postseason.
Boxed in
The Blackhawks need to find a balance between their trademark physical play and the costly penalties they took Wednesday night.
Chicago was whistled just three times in the entire game but the Flyers made the most of those man advantages, scoring twice on the power play. Daniel Briere opened scoring with a power-play goal in the first period and Scott Hartnell picked up another goal with Chicago in the box midway through the middle frame.
“We maybe took a few penalties that we shouldn’t and that’s maybe what cost us the game, too,” Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews told the CBC. “So we’ll be smarter. We don’t want to be that team - we’ve said all along we’re going to be smart. We’ve seen other teams take stupid penalties against us, but we’re not going to try and let them suck us into playing like that.”
Philadelphia has boasted one of the best power-play attacks this postseason, netting 10 goals on the man advantage for a 22.8 percent efficiency. It has scored four times on the power play in this series.
“We were right there,” Duncan Keith told the media. “We’ve got to learn what mistakes we did out there and basically it comes to staying out of the penalty box. We talk about that every day. Every day we talk about that and sooner or later we’ve got to put that in our heads.”
Finishing strong
The Flyers have proved harder to kill than a horror movie villain this postseason. And it seems they saved their best for last.
Philadelphia has dominated the third period in this series, outshooting Chicago 36-16 in the final frame. In the past two games, the Flyers have put up 15 shots in the third compared to the Blackhawks’ four. However, goal scoring in the third period is locked at 2-2.
“I thought we were pretty effective for the first 40 minutes,” Chicago coach Joel Quenneville told reporters after Game 3. “We were pretty good at the start of the third when we scored, then they scored on the following shift.
“We spent a lot of time in our end, not as bad as last game. I thought in overtime we had a couple good looks to end it.”