GAME SIX RECAP (Penguins 5, Flyers 3)

Here's the caption that runs below this photo in the online edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Fyers fans are stunned after Syndey's Crosby goal in the second period. (Ron Cortes / Staff Photographer)" We can try to imagine that the "Syndey" is as unintentional as the "Fyers," but there are several more photos featuring Crosby, and they're all labeled with the girl name misspelling.

The worm has turned. The Flyers and Penguins both entered the NHL in 1967. The Flyers were almost immediately successful, and won Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975. The Penguins were immediately inept, and filed for their first bankruptcy at the same time the Flyers were winning it all. The Flyers' main rivals have been the coastal Patrick Division teams-- the Rangers, Devils and Capitals. In comparison to that white-hot hatred, the Flyers and their followers have generally regarded the Penguins as the little brother that's too small-time to be a true rival. And why shouldn't they have felt that way? The Penguins once went--what?-- fifteen years without winning a single game in Philadelphia. And even when the Penguins started putting together a successful team in the late eighties and the regular-season results began to even out, the Flyers still walked all over them in the postseason. They put away the Penguins in a second-round series in 1989 after the Penguins took a 3-2 series lead. They humiliated a one-line-deep Penguins team in five games in 1997 and, in the process, sent Mario Lemieux off to his first semi-permanent retirement. Maybe most painfully, the Flyers rebounded after dropping the first two games to the Penguins at home in the 2000 playoffs to win their second-round series in six games. Three playoff matchups, and three beatdowns. So you can't blame me for thinking there's something surreal about the Penguins being on the right side of a handshake line with the Flyers in two consecutive years. Maybe it took forty years, but the nail is turning on the hammer.

Hockey's a strange sport. There are two ways in which a team can be said to be playing better than another team. The first, and only significant measure, is who scores more goals. The second way in which a team plays better than another is to win the little battles, like faceoffs and possession scrums along the boards, and avoiding neutral zone mistakes, playing well in your own end and making sure that scoring chances end up with a decent shot on net. The second measure often, but not always, follows the first. A goalie playing out of his mind can help a team that's losing by the second measure still come out on top of the game. In Games Two, Three and Four, the Flyers played better than the Penguins by the second measure, but they only won Game Three. In Games Five and Six, the Penguins played better than the Flyers, but still stared down a 3-0 deficit a few minutes into the second period. Cue Max Talbot, a nonpugilist, picking a fight with Daniel Carcillo, a frequent Flyer fighter. I'll always be ambivalent about the existence of fisticuffs in hockey, and one of the things I like best about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that you see almost no fighting majors. Still, it's hard to deny that at times a fight settles a game down, or inspires a team to play with more urgency. And given that the score was 3-2 a few minutes later, I'm not inclined to argue with the Penguins, who all claimed afterward that seeing their teammate pummeled mercilessly turned the game around for them.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that with the Penguins' series against the big, nasty Flyers nearly certainly headed to the crapshoot of a Game Seven, the Penguins used a fight to reverse the course of the game. Fedotenko's goal to get the Penguins on the board was just cleaning up the garbage after Malkin willed himself to the net. If there's a quicker whistle there, maybe the comeback never happens. The Penguins' second goal was even neater. Since newly-de-interimed Dan Bylsma took over the team, he'd made a significant tweak to get the team's defensemen more involved in the team's offense. No big deal for the offensive blueliners like Gonchar and Letang, but for the stay-at-home guys who make up the 66% of their normal top-six? Since then, we've been treated to Hal Gill finishing on a 2 on 1 and everybody else pinching in to keep offensive-zone chances alive. They kept the defensive exposure created by this adjustment to a minimum by rotating a high forward out, but the playoffs dictates a safer approach to team defense. Or so says conventional wisdom. So when, on a four-on-four stretch coming right after penalties were dished out over the Flyers taking offense to the Fedotenko goal, who seriously thinks Mark Eaton is going to be the second man into the zone, and who thinks he's going to go straight down the slot? I didn't think it would happen, and neither did the Flyers, who let him go right in and baseball-slap a deflected puck into the net. When Sid tied the game a little while later on yet another baseball-swing deflection, the handwriting was on the wall. All that remained were a few more half-hearted "Crosby Sucks" chants and a Sergei Gonchar goal to close it out.