Flyers Revisit Scene of the Crime
The Boston Massacre: 2010. The Bruins 3-0 series lead, vanished without a trace. Their 3-0 Game 7 lead, dead and buried. The people responsible: your Philadelphia Flyers. Saturday night, we were back in Boston for the first time since that awesome comeback. And this was another fun contest, with some late heroics from Mike Richards.
Richards converts on Savards errant drop pass. (Courtesy: Life.com)
A 2-1 win doesn’t sound too sexy, but this was a pretty fun game. Mostly because the Flyers dominated Boston throughout. The first period was pretty even, some back and forth, and ended up scoreless. The second is where things got interesting. Jody Shelley committed a bonehead play (more on that below) that lead to a 5 minute Bruins powerplay. This was an obvious way in which momentum would swing one way or the other. The Flyers took care of the Pepsi Penalty Kill (more on that below, too) and limited the B’s to 5 shots. Then Mike Honcho himself, JVR, gave the Orange and Black a lead. Carter fed him the puck on a rush, and he ripped the one-timer past the resurrected Tim Thomas.
The slim lead could have, and should have held up in the third. The Flyers kept the pressure up, being denied only by the gatekeeper. Finally, Boston cracked through when Pronger caught a puck, and instead of flinging it out of the zone, calmly placed it at his feet, right in the slot. Nathan Horton took it right off of him, fired the equalizer past a stunned Brian Boucher. The Flyers kept pushing as time ticked away in regulation and overtime. It looked like we were headed to overtime, until Marc Savard dropped the puck to a non-existent point man. Richards headed the other way, waited for two guys to join him, turning a 1 on 1 into a 3 on 1. Everyone waited for him to pass, but he released a shot that made it in with 3 seconds left. Game, set, match! And the rowdy Boston fans were silenced, and went home sad. Aww!
Notes:
- As any Flyers fan knows, when the team plays at home and goes on the power play, PA announcer Lou Nolan gets the fans pumped by screaming, “And the Flyers are going on the PECO POWERPLAY.” Everyone shouts along with him, and it’s just one of those fun little gimmicks that we all enjoy. Now, the radio announcers, during ever Flyers game, are calling it a Pepsi Penalty Kill every time we go down a man. I’m not sure how much I like it. It’s on the radio, not something we can go along with. Peco is an energy company; they provide power. Thus, Peco Powerplay is clever marketing. Pepsi is a soda company, and has no correlation to killing penalties. It’s just blatant sponsorship, pretty uncreative. And even though it has a flow to it, I do not support it.
- More importantly, what the hell is wrong with Jody Shelley? He’s an overpaid, useless, piece of crap. He’s about to lose a race to the puck, so he shoves the guy head-first into the boards. 5 minute major, 10 minutes and a game misconduct later, and we’re in a tough spot. Ever since Dan Carcillo was injured, he hasn’t gotten a spot in the line-up because Laviolette is superstitious and doesn’t like to make line-up changes if they aren’t necessary. Looks like it’s necessary to put him into Shelley’s place. Everyone bitched about the money we spent on Shelley. Everyone continues to be right. He’s not a great fighter, he’s not a very good player, and he is severely overpaid for his role. I’ve never been a fan of Carcillo, but I think he’s more important that Shelley is to the club. Please, Flyers, dump him. We already lead the league in penalties, do we really want our guys to tire out while on the Pepsi Penalty Kill all the time?
- Boucher played in back to back games. Is it really to give Bobrovsky a break, or is Bob starting to crack? I think it’s more about giving the kid a rest. It would be nice if Boosh get get some more goal support.
- Speaking of goal support, the Flyers had their chances. Tim Thomas is that damn good, and he’s definitely back. This Bruins team is not the offensive power that it was 2 years ago, but they’ll still be very hard to beat because of how well he plays every night.
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