AJgoal

Exactly. Flyers coming in on a 3-on-2 and Giroux, of all people, throws a pass 3-4 feet behind Hartnell. Stopping and letting the Devils get to loose pucks. Taking bad angles to the puck or to the boards. Running into eachother. It was like someone took my beer league team, threw Flyers jerseys on us, and told us to finish the game.

Jack - I concur. I will now go drill a hole in my head to expunge that information.

Control the pace the whole game. Play physical when the opportunity presents itself, but play under control. Smother the Devils with offense, and play smart in the defensive zone. Come up with a few more hockey proverbs and follow those too. But seriously, I think they come out in the first tonight the way they did in the second, third, and OT of game 1. They're into the series now, the layoff is done, and there's hockey to be played. I think they'll be ready.

I don't know where those two are. They're not out west and I haven't seen them in the east, either. I'd like to see NBC just stick one team with each series and let them roll, rather than bouncing Pierre and Emrick all over the place to get them into as many games as possible. Give us Strader and Engblom, Keep Doc, Edzo, and Pierre in the "premiere" matchup in NY, and then whoever they have out west. I will agree on Olczyk though. I honestly don't have a lot of trouble with him as the color analyst unless he's calling Pittsburgh or Chicago.

That's unfortunate. Kovalchuk may only have gotten one point, but he was involved in at least two of the Flyers' goals.

Well, if you have a dvr you can just pause the game until the radio catches up. Just stay out of the game chat. And yeah, I like Saunders and Bundy over the national guys. Unfortunately, Emrick and Pierre weren't at the NY game last night, so that probably means they'll be covering the Flyers tonight.

Well, look at how the whole team came out after a long layoff in game 1. You don't want to keep living from behind in the POs. Against a team as defensively minded as the Rangers or Caps, it'll be harder to come back. I've always thought a long layoff against a team that's basically rolling from one series into another is dangerous, and with Bryzgalov's volatility it might be especially so.

Bryzgalov does, from when he went 3-1 in 4 starts with a .922 save percentage in the first round the year Anaheim won the cup. I was overseas at the time so couldn't follow the games. I honestly couldn't tell you anything about his play, or why he didn't finish out the playoffs, or why he was in to begin with. All I know is he played the first 4 games, went 3-1, and didn't play after game 4 until he came in in relief in a 5-0 loss to the Wings. That was a tongue in cheek statement. But Bryzgalov is a lifetime 17-15 with a .909 in the playoffs, and Lundqvist is 20-23 with a .916. That's one fewer goal every nine games (assuming ~30 shots per game) or so. And that includes this year. Lundqvist has won a grand total of one more playoff series, in one more playoff appearance - though Bryzgalov was well on his way to another series win in 2007. But as they say when investing, prior results don't guarantee future results. Or something. Anyway, I didn't really mean to jump in here and try to give the impression that I'm saying that Bryzgalov is going to win the Conn Smythe or even that he'll be (or has been) all that great. My original point was that I think he needs consistant work to be successful (This year was his lowest number of games started since his first season in Phoenix), such as we saw in March, and that the injury and the layoff didn't help with that coming into the POs. I hope that playing every other day against the Devils will get him back on the track we saw in March, or even to where he was during November - mid December. This is a mental issue that he needs to fix - but there's enough data that says his current level of play is fixable. What remains to be seen is if he has enough time.

FC - he's also tied for 2nd in the most important category - wins. His win% is better than anyone not named Smith or Quick. He has to play better, as I've said over and over. But there are a lot of folks out there who seem to refuse to acknowledge that he has the capability. That's what I disagree with.

That's actually good news. The fewer Yankees games on our "local" sports radio station, the better.

One more thing, re: Lundqvist vs. Bryzgalov. One has a better than .500 winning% in the playoffs and a cup ring, the other one doesn't. And the one that doesn't isn't playing in Philly. Not that that really means anything.

And here, again, I disagree. He turned in two months where his save percentage was below .900, October and December (.880 and .878). Three other months he put up better than .915, and in January he had a paltry .909. That's pretty consistant. Living up to expectations I will give you. For what he's making every year, he should be posting a .918-.920 for the season. I think people remember the bad goals and forget that he played generally strong games, even when he let in bad goals. And that's the thing: bad goals don't necessarily equate to a bad game by the goaltender - they just equal a bad play. A guy can play a strong game and give up a couple weak goals - they don't negate the 30 saves he made in the process. Just like he can have a bad game and still make some spectacular saves. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive of each other. It has to be evaluated as part of the whole. Bryzgalov faced 26 shots and made 23 saves last game. That's generally an adequate line. He let in one horrible one vs. Sykora, and another bad one on the PP due to his attempt to handle the puck and subsequent trouble getting back. But what about those 23 other saves? There were some quality scoring chances in there. But around here we have to go to the extreme on either side. Since he didn't play a great game, it has to have been horrible, when in fact, it was a pretty average game overall. Which is what this team needs to win. Compare it to what we hear about skaters. Voracek had a horrible, horrible giveaway that led to the third goal. But next to nobody is jumping down his throat saying he played a horrible game. Same thing for Read. One or two bad plays over the course of a 60 minute game don't mean the guy played horribly. It does, of course, mean that there is (lots of) room for improvement, however.

Although I know the point about junior was meant to be fascetious, but it's actually a fairly good one. Read played 37 games with Bemidji each year from 2007-2008 through 2010-2011. In 2011, he then played 11 more games with Adirondack, so 48 games total. This year he played 78 regular season games and now 7 playoff games. He's approaching double what he's used to. Contrast that with Couturier who played 58-68-58 (plus 7 in the WJC) over the last three seasons. It seems fairly common with players coming out of college programs that they struggle down the stretch. The conditioining isn't there. It's not their fault, you need game time to get that, but Junior players don't seem to tail off the same way.

Hexy, My point is not that he's an elite goaltender. I've said twice that his performance shows he isn't. What I'm trying to show is that the "He has stunk for the entire season except for March" and "He's the worst goaltender in hockey" group are off base in their assessment. And it's funny that you point to "peaks and valleys" over the time period that I mention. First, every goalie will have games where they have sub-.900 save percentages. Here's a one month line for you: .871, .909, .898, .857, .842, .895, .909, .963, .846, .880, .923, .917, .950 for a monthy sv% of .897. Over the 16 games I previously listed, Bryz had six that were sub-.900, compared to 7 of 13 in the line I posted above. One of those was the Boston game where the team decided that they didn't need to play that day, and that was his second worst performance over that stretch. He had eight games that were a .930 or better, 10 of .920 or better, but you're making my point in fixating on the two "valley" games, while over the whole of the time period, those were aberrations as opposed to the norm. I was not a fan of bringing Bryzgalov in for 9 years, and don't think he's the elite goalie they thought they were getting when he was signed, but it's ridiculous how some fans like to handwave away the fact that he performed very well over significant portions of the season and say that he's sucked all year. It's just patently untrue. Does his play need to get better? Sure it does. I'm just trying to point out that he actually has the capability to do so, something which some people just seem to refuse to acknowledge.

Which one month stretch? It's funny how folks forget how well he played In November into mid-December. Starting on the last game of October: .960, .935, .943, .947, .939, .968, .871, .667 (Isles game), .864, .947, .833, .926, .875, .969, .750 (Bruins 6-0 Shellacking), but then he came back with a .926 against CO and lost in the SO. That's a .910 over almost two months. Hell, even in January and February, when he was playing poorly, he put up .912 and .909 for the months. Stats don't tell the whole story - bad goals were what were driving us nuts then, as now, and save percentages can be inflated by team D minimizing high quality chances (with the opposite also being true), but when a guy pitches a shutout and loses 0-1 in the shootout, or keeps the opponent to 2 or fewer goals and still loses, as happened three times in January-February, he's still playing fairly good hockey. I get that the contract is bad, and I get that he hasn't been particularly good in these playoffs, though he has generally done what is needed to keep his team in the game. But what I don't get is this constant lamenting that Bryzgalov has been the WORST GOALIE EVER for the whole season, and there is NO CHANCE that he plays better. The fact of the matter is he played pretty darn well in the beginning of the season, then played pretty poorly from late December through February, and turned in stellar play in March until he got hurt. While that isn't the mark of an elite goalie, his play in the early stages of the season and down the stretch show what he is capable of, and Detroit showed that good team play can overcome even poor goaltending. I haven't seen any redline goals against Bryz like I saw against Osgood.

Bryzgalov needs playing time. I think that's what we saw over the last part of the season when Lavi played him non stop and he became unbeatable in March. Then he got injured, missed time, and had to come back and get into a groove again. When it seemed like he was getting back into it, in games 5 and 6, we have the week off, and he struggles again. If the team keeps playing and he keeps playing, I think we'll see him get stronger as the series progress. This is not meant to be an absolution, but an observation. If he was truly an elite goaltender, the time off shouldn't phase him that much. He's not doing now what he was doing in March that made him so successful, that is, being agressive but patient. I think that he's a guy that needs reps and consistency in order to be on the top of his game, and I think as long as there's no ridiculous layoff between this series and the next, assuming the Flyers advance, you'll see him get stronger.

I don't know that he'll get a goal, but he'll put up a few points with his hustle. Talbot and Couturier will benefit from his speed, chasing down pucks in the offensive zone.

I'm going to have to follow this blog a little more closely. Some of these are just gold: http://www.downgoesbrown.com/2012/04/what-went-wrong-excuses-from-nhls.html

I want Paul the Octopus' opinion. It's the only one that matters. Of course, he's dead.

You're assuming they realize I exist. I doubt I'm significant enough for them to dislike me.

I'm surprised I can't find video of it. In the infamous "no goal" series, Jonesy ran over Hasek twice, in two different games. Rumor has it that in one of the resulting scrums, he was choking Hasek, saying "I want this more than you." Of course, that is all hearsay and has never been confirmed...

I'm rooting against the Rags, not because I want to avoid them, necessarily, but because I don't like them.

Or Keith Jones, who gets neither when he does it twice in one series.

I think its the opposite. They got hosed on the Philly segment, but were able to make up for it somewhat when they offloaded Carter to LA. Carter did nothing for them. Turning him into a first rounder and a pretty good offensive defenseman was a win for them.

There's a reason I don't cheer for matchups. Play who's in front of you.