Philly Behind the 8-Ball

Anyone else wanna sign a quick petition to say, forego the fourth game of either series and let's just do this Cup Finals thing? I think it's a great idea... the suspense is really lost on these Conference Finals.

The Flyers find themselves behind the 8-ball this morning after taking a 4-1 loss to the Penguins, at home in the Wachovia Center. The Flyers lost in their pumpkin patch of a crowd, where they hadn't necessarily been dominant through the playoffs, but they were sure hard to play.

Just a note for the Flyers... every team (besides the Stars, 'cuz it just happened yesterday) that fell behind the 8-ball hasn't recovered. Only the Washington Capitals made their series interesting after falling behind and that was against these same Flyers. So, let's face it... the 8-ball has spoken, let's move on.

Quickly turning into the best trade deadline day deal of the year, Marian Hossa's (Box 15) arrival in Pittsburgh was met with a fair bit of skepticism, besides the disbelief that the Penguins added that much firepower. Oh, how the true colours have shone through in these playoffs. Hossa scored his third game-winning goal of the playoffs as the Penguins have now run their new playoff winning streak to 7 games and they now have a 11-1 record in these playoffs. Hossa also finished the night with three points, thanks to another goal he had scored later on in the game.

Both Marc-Andre Fleury (Box 24) and Sidney Crosby (Box 13) were the only other Penguins to have multi-point games on Tuesday night. Fleury won his 11th to get his pool-leading 26th point, while Crosby added a pair of assists to bring his playoff pool total to 20 points. Since the Flyers only scored one goal in the game, there were no multi-point players on their side of the ledger.

As expected, Braydon Coburn (Box 21) was out of the line-up with his facial/eye injury after taking a puck to the face in Game 2. Without Coburn and Timonen, the Flyers are truly having trouble taking away space from the Penguins' top players and it's almost expected to see the Flyers roll over in Game 4.