Flyers Make History -- You Can't Make This Stuff Up

When it comes to sports, everybody -- athletes, coaches, fans, media -- likes to make predictions. Whether it's about a particular game or a playoff series or an entire season, people feel they know enough to project how things will go down. Often those predictions don't come true. Sometimes they do. And sometimes they come true in inexplicable fashion.

Case in point: the Philadelphia Flyers. Lots of people thought, prior to the season, that the Flyers were serious Stanley Cup contenders. The Hockey News outright predicted the Flyers would win the Cup. Sure enough, after tonight's 4-3 win over the Boston Bruins, winning their Eastern Conference semifinal series 4-3 after trailing 3-0, the Flyers still have a chance. But how they got to this point -- that's the inexplicable part.

The Flyers got off to a quick start and then fell into a morass of inconsistency that led to a coaching change. Injuries caused a goaltending carousel -- 7 different goalies dressed for a game, 5 of those 7 actually got into at least one game. They had to defeat the New York Rangers in the final game of the season just to get into the playoffs. After three periods and a five-minute overtime, they got that win in the shootout, where the Flyers have historically sucked.


In the East quarterfinals the seventh-seeded Flyers took out the second-seeded New Jersey Devils in five games behind the goaltending of Brian Boucher. Boucher had a 3-1 lead over the Devils 10 years earlier, only to see New Jersey come back to win. Boucher was in goal in this series only because Ray Emery is out for the season and Michael Leighton suffered an ankle sprain in mid-March. But that was just the beginning.

The Flyers moved into the Eastern semis against the sixth-seeded Bruins missing three key forwards due to injury -- Jeff Carter, Simon Gagne (pictured) and Ian Laperrierre. Boston won the first three games despite being outplayed much of the time, winning Game 1 in overtime and Game 2 in the last 3 minutes of regulation.

But Simon Gagne returned for Game 4 despite a not-fully-healed broken right toe, and scored the game-winning goal in overtime -- after the Bruins tied the game with 31.5 seconds left. Gagne scored twice more in Game 5, a 4-0 Flyers rout that featured another strange turn. Early in the second period Boucher was caught in a pileup of bodies and suffered injuries to both knees, one being hurt enough to likely keep him out the rest of the playoffs. Leighton came in for his first action in 2 months and finished the shutout, then shut out Boston for 59 minutes in Game 6. The 2-1 win tied the series, just the 6th time in NHL history that a team down 0-3 managed to force a 7th game. It hadn't happened since 1975. Only two of those 6 teams won the 7th game. Again, it hadn't happened since 1975.

There were lots of predictions that the Flyers were going to win Game 7. Understandable, right? Then the Bruins ran up a 3-0 lead in the first 15 minutes. Suddenly those predictions seemed ridiculous. Then a shot by James van Riemsdyk somehow got past Boston goalie Tuukka Rask late in the first period, and the tide turned. Second-period goals by Scott Hartnell and Danny Briere tied the game, and a third-period Boston penalty for too many men on the ice resulted in a Gagne power play goal with 7:08 left. The Flyers held on to pull off the stunning, historic victory.

While the crowd in Boston watched in horror, the Wachovia Center was opened up so people could watch the game on the big screens and over 11,000 fans went crazy. (There's a video at CSNPhilly.com that I wanted to embed here, but it's not displaying properly on my page, so you'll have to go there if you want to see it.)

The Flyers now face the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference finals, with the winner going to the Stanley Cup finals. The Canadiens are the eighth seed, knocking off both the 09-10 regular season's top team (Washington) and the defending champions (Pittsburgh). This means that the Flyers actually have home-ice advantage for the series. I'm not sure anyone could have predicted that.