... And The Flyers & Rangers Make Three

Three Game Sevens, that is.

The Philadelphia Flyers emphatically beat up on the New York Rangers in Game Six at the Wells Fargo Center, 5-2, to force a Game Seven, which goes with the other two Western Conference dates on Wednesday night.

The Rangers and Flyers have been back-and-forth in this series, with the Rangers winning one game and then the Flyers coming back and tying up the series.  By virtue of the pattern, the Flyers could be in tough, plus, heading to Madison Square Gardens to finish up the series, but riding the emotional high of a big win to force Game Seven and playing the next night, might play in Philly's favour.

The Flyers got off to a rocky start in Game Six, giving their keeper, Steve Mason, all that he could handle from all of their turnovers to start the game, but Mason stood tall, keeping the Rangers at bay.  The Flyers power play broke the game open, as Wayne Simmonds started a big night early on.  In the 2nd period, Simmonds completed the hat trick and Erik Gustafsson scored for a 4-0 lead after two and then it was fairly smooth sailing from there on in, as the Rangers could only muster a couple of garbage goals to Claude Giroux's empty-netter and that was that.

Both Simmonds and Giroux each finished with 3 points a piece, while Mason made 34 saves for his 2 points and those were all of your notable players in this game.  Gustafsson ended up with the winning goal, which meant that the bonus point fell into limbo.

Like it was mentioned earlier, Game Seven will go tonight in New York and if the hockey pool selections have any say in the likely outcome, the selections were 71-54 for the Rangers.  This was by far the closest series in the Eastern Conference and likely the hardest to choose.  This series could make or break a lot of teams in the standings.

Just for argument's sake, the Colorado/Minnesota series has the Avalanche coming away, 83-12, while in the Los Angeles/San Jose series, it was nearly a draw, but the Kings narrowly have the edge, 87-83.  There were quite a few more spread out picks, pool teams taking some chances between teams in a series out West, since it was so hard to call.