| Friday, November 3
By Rob Parent
Special to ESPN.com |
|
Welcome back, Flyers. Long time, no C.
Congratulations, Penguins. Keep this up and maybe Mario can stop doing
fundraising dinners.
Jolly good resurrection, Devils. Trying an alternative spring route this
time?
All three went up 3-0 in their respective best-of-too-many-games
first-round series, and with all three you could give decent odds on them
doing something that hasn't taken place in 25 years -- losing the next four.
If not now, perhaps never again. The time is ripe for hysterical history to
repeat itself.
|  | | Keith Primeau and the Flyers have played well without Eric Lindros. |
Already underway on their deconstruction campaigns by Thursday morning
were Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Both lost a Game 4 on the road in
tough, 3-2 games. Not that it's any big deal ...
"We never said we were going to beat these guys (the Buffalo Sabres) in
four straight," the Flyers' John LeClair said. And after four games in which
they've scored all of one goal during a 5-on-5 situation, who's going to
confidently predict they won't cut a U-turn on one of those infuriating
one-way roads through Buffalo?
With Eric the Expatriated Captain now confirmed to be out for the second
round, too, the Flyers rallied around their foolish, unified feeling that
they're better off without Lindros and took it to the Sabres in the first
three games. Then again, they won Game 2 because LeClair's shot through the
side of the net was allowed to stand and because the Sabres have allowed the
officials to get under their collectively thin skins.
Does that bode well for a team that still has to win a fourth game against
the momentarily mentally stable Hasek?
Ditto the Penguins. With Jaromir Jagr healthier than he's been in weeks,
they stunned the formerly flying Capitals with an Eastern European blitz in a
7-0 opener, and it took much of the next two games for the Caps to recover.
The secret here, however, has been exiled Senator Ron Tugnutt. He stole Game
3 and kept them in Game 4.
But Tugnutt has a history of folding in crunch time. Think the time is
ripe to do that again behind the Penguins' inconsistent defense?
All that can be said for those New Jersey Devils, is even the real experts say they're too
difficult to call. What do you say about a team that spends much of the season
running away with the East, only to win six or seven games in the last two
months and allow itself to be overtaken by the Flyers on the last day of the
regular season?
If ever a wackier season existed in the East, I'd like to see the tape. No
doubt, it would include a bunch of guys with unkempt long hair in place of
where their helmets should be; a time when a 20-goal scorer was a star, and
might be asking for a huge raise to $50,000 in his next contract negotiation.
Ah, yes. Could those crazy days of 1975 be on the verge of an
instant replay?
Sound familiar, Penguins?
Wasn't it just a quarter-century ago your predecessors took a 3-0 series
lead on the New York Islanders -- a team that no one knew was going to be so
good about five years in the future -- and somehow let it slip away? Was it
the fact that those Penguins weren't defensively responsible enough like now?
Came up short on the physical end as they do so often these days? Or was it
the John Denver concerts going on that week that screwed with the schedule?
Hey, who won that wrestling match at Civic Arena the other night that they
moved those games to Washington for?
Either way, the memory is there for all you great Pittsburgh fans to share
-- particularly with your neighbors from across the state. How a 3-0 lead on
April 19, 1975 became a 4-3 deficit on April 26, 1975; and how it became the
Islanders advancing into the next round against the Broad St. Bully Flyers
instead of the Penguins.
"That's how easily things can turn," current Penguins assistant coach Rick
Kehoe, a member of that group of pitiable Penguins, told the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. "I think it was (an ultimate low point) for a lot of guys on
that team."
That it's happened just twice in history -- the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs
pulled off the same feat -- shouldn't deter anyone from thinking it can't
happen again. After all, in that very next round of that silly sports spring
of '75, the upstart Islanders almost pulled the same surprise on the proud
Flyers.
This was an accomplished, puggish Philadelphia team on its way to a second
straight Stanley Cup. Figuring like everyone else that the Islanders were
just lucky to be there, the Flyers rolled to three straight wins in that Cup
semifinal round. Then, almost as if a higher island authority were guiding
the hand of fate, the Islanders began another magic act, cooking up three
consecutive wins of their own until reality set in and the Flyers prevailed
in the seventh game.
But back to the present ... and the pivotal Game 5 for Philly-Buffalo and Washington-Pittsburgh.
"The next game could determine it," said Sabres forward Geoff Sanderson. "The next game in Philly, it's going to be a
huge game. Obviously, it could be a series decider for them, but it could be
for us, too. If we can play the same game, get a 'W' under our belt, then
that changes the complexity of the series."
The Capitals feel the same way about their own fifth series game Friday.
Could it be so impossible that Olaf Kolzig, the streakiest goalie in the
world, could suddenly get hot again? And isn't Jagr's domination of this
series just one Chris Simon slash away from being null and void?
"Games like these scare me to death," Penguins head coach of the moment
Herb Brooks said. And he was right to be scared -- he said it before Game 4.
"All of a sudden, if we go in there (Washington) and lose a couple of
tight games, and they come back here and grab one in Game 6, then we have to
go there in Game 7," Brooks the fatalist rambled. "That can happen. Fast.
Real fast ... We've got someone by their throat. Now, we have to cut their
throat!"
Is Herbie panicking?
Editor's note: This was supposed to be an historical essay on the
likelihood of one of the three teams that won the first three games of their Eastern
Conference quarterfinal series losing that series, an oddity which hasn't
happened in 25 years. It has been determined that there are enough
coincidental historical similarities and current indicators to appropriately
hypothesize that the time is right to wager either Pittsburgh -- now taking
7-to-1 odds on it happening -- or Philadelphia -- down to No. 88-to-1 -- will crash
and burn at the first-round gate.
Besides, the author respectively picked Washington in five, Buffalo in six
and Florida in six. The dolt.
That it's time to quit trying to predict anything in this Eastern Conference that Pete Rozelle would love. That's what. Now, when's that next game in Toronto?
Rob Parent covers the NHL for the Delaware County (Pa.) Times. His NHL East column appears every week on ESPN.com. |  |
