NHL wanted long series ... and gets it
PHILADELPHIA - Rarely has the NHL been in such a perfect spot.
The Stanley Cup Finals offering two big cities, long droughts, compelling stories, huge stars, and TV ratings to match.
Throw in the fact that Gary Bettman is a David Stern clone, and you need not be Oliver Stone to discover a cabal thrown together in pursuit of a seven-game series.
Allow a local conspiracy theorist to do the math, and when you add it up you can make a case for the NHL wanting this to be a very long series.
That's guaranteed now after the Flyers defeated the Blackhawks 5-3 at the Wachovia Center on Friday night to tie the series at 2-2, heading back to Chicago for a Game 5 Sunday night and a Game 6 back here Wednesday.
The Flyers had 6 more power plays Friday and scored once, making them 5-for-16 in the series, while the Hawks had 3 power plays and scored in the third on a 5-on-3, giving them a single power-play goal in only 9 opportunities.
The Hawks, who had been 4-0 following a loss, outshot the Flyers for the first time in the series, but Mike Leighton was the much better goalie in Game 4.
If after the first two games you thought the Flyers could have just as easily been up 2-0 as down, it seems the breaks have evened out now.
"We got a lucky goal when I shot one off the back (of Kris Versteeg),'' said Ville Leino. "That was a big goal for us, a good break for us.''
The bounces that were all going the Hawks' way for a month have turned against them, though it didn't help that Antti Niemi had one of his worst games of the postseason.
He gave up a power-play goal only five seconds after Tomas Kopecky took a penalty 4:35 into the game when the Hawks won a faceoff in their own end, but as Niklas Hjalmarsson went around the net, he had his pocket picked from behind and in one motion Mike Richards put a weak backhander past Niemi.
The next 2 goals were basically open-netters, with the Flyers going up 3-1 late in the first when four Hawks - five if you include Niemi - got caught watching Kimmo Timonen with the puck in the deep slot, and he fed Claude Giroux parked next to the net for a two-foot putt into an empty cage.
"I'll have to look at the tape and see what happened,'' said Brent Sopel, who was on the ice with Duncan Keith at the time. "When a guy's left all alone for a tap-in, that's bad.''
Yeah, that's bad, but if you're a Hawks fanatic you can be encouraged by the fact that the Hawks made it a game late in the third period Friday and dominated play for at least a few desperate minutes.
There's also the knowledge that the Flyers started down 2-0 in the Finals and would have to win four of five from that point to win the series, and the Hawks haven't dropped four of five since March 30, some 67 days and 28 games ago.
On the scary side, this is a Flyers team that believes no deficit is impossible to overcome, having proven that over and over again since making the playoffs in a shootout on the final day of the regular season.
They had the monumental comeback against Boston down 3-0 in the series and trailing 3-0 in Game 7, but by now you also know that only two teams in history have come back from down 2-0 on the road to win a Stanley Cup.
The Penguins did it a year ago and the Canadiens - as we know too well - punished the Hawks in 1971.
"Game 3 and 4 is over. You have to let it go," Sopel said. "It's a roller-coaster ride with ups and downs and you have to stay on an even keel.
"It's a best-of-3 now and so all you can do is forget about what happened and move on."
Yes, it's now a three-game series and you have to believe Bettman and his merry band couldn't be happier.
If you smell seven games, you're not alone.
brozner@dailyherald.com
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