Flyers sit four wins away from greatness

Woo! More playoff hockey!
After making the playoffs on the last day of the NHL season, the Philadelphia Flyers will be battling the Chicago Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup.
It took 82 games, overtime, a shootout, seven goalies, a coaching change, broken feet, a broken face, a miraculous comeback from down 0-3 versus the Bruins, and three shutouts in the Eastern Conference finals from a waiver claim, but the Flyers are four wins away from lifting the most storied trophy in all of sports.
Ironically, just three years after Chicago slipped into the top spot in the 2007 draft, taking Patrick Kane and dropping James van Riemsdyk to the Flyers, the two doormats of the 2006-07 season are now the top two teams in NHL.
I know that the national media will tell us how great the Blackhawks are, and they are a great team, but don’t think for one second that the Flyers can’t win it all.
Even though the Flyers essentially went 41-41 during the season, compared to the Blackhawks, who went 52-30, this team is peaking at the right time, and all of the players that underachieved during the regular season are suddenly at the top of their games.
So despite taking a much tougher road to the Stanley Cup finals, the underdog Flyers actually match up pretty well with the second seed from the Western Conference.
Forwards: From a pure goal-scoring perspective, Chicago’s pairing of Kane and Jonathan Toews are better than any pair the Flyers can throw out on the ice, but while the Blackhawks top line is as dangerous as any in the NHL, the Flyers can send wave after wave of scorers onto the ice. After the top line of Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Simon Gagne, the Flyers can send out Danny Briere, Scott Hartnell and Ville Leino as line 1B, and then Claude Giroux, JVR and Arron Asham as line 1C. While Richards leads the team with 21 points, Briere and Giroux lead the Flyers in goals with nine and eight, respectively, and then Leino has 12 points in 13 games.
After Toews and Kane, the Hawks have Dustin Byfuglien leading the team with eight goals, Patrick Sharp has 16 points, and then there is Marian Hossa, who will take the ice in his third Stanley Cup final while wearing his third different sweater in as many years. Hossa lost with Pittsburgh in 2008, lost with Detroit in 2009 and hopefully will lose again in 2010.
While many will say Chicago wins this matchup, to get to the finals, the Flyers’ snipers knocked off the best goalie in NHL history (Martin Brodeur), the top goalie from the regular season (Tuukka Rask) and the hottest goalie in the playoffs (Jaroslav Halak). In comparison, the Blackhawks defeated two goalies who have spent the last few seasons choking away big-game opportunities – Roberto Luongo and Evgeni Nabokov – and Nashville’s pedestrian netminder Pekka Rinne.
Edge: Flyers
Defensemen: I would love to say that the Flyers have the best defense in the finals, but Chicago is simply better. This situation is like the forwards, but in reverse. The Flyers are very top-heavy with Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Matt Carle and Braydon Coburn, but the third defensive pairing of Lukas Krajicek and Ryan Parent greatly hinders the effort. While the Flyers play their top four defensemen as much as possible, sometimes more than 30 minutes per game for Pronger and Timonen, the Blackhawks have six defensemen who can play against any line and be successful. Led by Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, the Blackhawks have five blue-liners averaging more than 18 minutes per game, with a combined rating of plus-30 through the first three rounds of the playoffs.
I would take the Flyers’ top four over any four Blackhawks, but I don’t like our chances if Parent and Krajicek are forced to go up against Kane, Toews and Byfuglien for an extended period of time.
Edge: Blackhawks
Goaltenders: Back in February, I used Antti Niemi as an example of why teams should trust their ability and let a young goalie develop without the fear of a high-priced veteran breathing down his neck, so I won’t say anything bad about the Blackhawks’ netminder, but don’t let anyone say that Michael Leighton isn’t just as talented, if not the better man in the crease. Niemi is 12-4 with a 2.33 goals against average (GAA) in the playoffs, but Leighton, despite being claimed off waivers during the regular season, is now 6-1 with a 1.45 GAA and a .948 save percentage. Just because Leighton wasn’t on the Flyers in October when the season started, doesn’t mean he isn’t a Stanley Cup goalie. “Leights Out” went 16-5-2 during the regular season, and in eight playoff games since taking over for Brian Boucher, has allowed just 11 goals, and didn’t allow in single goal in four of those games.
Edge: Slightly Flyers
Special teams: The Flyers killed off 21 of Montreal’s 22 power plays, and were 67 of 77 in the first three rounds, while the Blackhawks were 58 of 67 on the penalty kill during the playoffs, so both teams are pretty evenly matched when playing a man down, but no matter what the numbers say, the Flyers are the better team in this category. The Flyers gave up six of those 10 goals without Ian Laperriere, but with Lappy back in the lineup, along with Blair Betts, Richards and Giroux, the Flyers have four of the best penalty-killing forwards in the league at their disposal when they head to the sin bin.
Edge: Flyers
Prediction: Flyers’ captain Mike Richards lifts Lord Stanley’s Cup after game 6 on Wednesday, June 9 in front of 20,000 orange-clad fanatics at the Wachovia Center.