Philly Taking Their Two

The chips really fell the Philadelphia Flyers way early on in Game Four and it looks like they were able to really capitalize on what was left for them in a 5-3 win on Friday night, tying up the series at two games a piece.  I was able to catch the first 10 minutes of the 1st period and you could see there was a little more confidence in that Flyers team.  Once Mike Richards potted that first power play goal against Antti Niemi, a soft goal, at best, it didn't appear that the Blackhawks were going to stop the Flyers, in theory.

The Flyers did seem to have an answer for just about everything in the game that the Blackhawks could throw at them.  After Patrick Sharp scored with a minute and a half remaining in the 1st to cut the lead to 2-1 and get some momentum from a late-period goal, Claude Giroux took a sweet feed from Kimmo Timonen down low under a minute later and snagged both the 2-goal lead and the momentum back. 

According to the full highlights on NHL.com, the latter half of the 2nd period looked to be all goalies, hanging on for their dear lives.  Both Niemi and Michael Leighton made some key stops, not letting the game get too out of hand and keeping it a 3-1 game after two periods. 

The third really didn't look to crank up until Ville Leino scored almost seven minutes to make the game into a 4-1 game, but if anything, all it did was finally spark up that Blackhawks offense, which we have seen get cranked up after an opponents goal in these playoffs, but not too often when they go down three goals like this.  Nevertheless, the Flyers did help things along for the Blackhawks, going down two men for which Dave Bolland was able to get onto the right end of a Duncan Keith slap pass cross crease and make the game of the 2-goal variety at 4-2.  Almost four minutes later, Brian Campbell crossed the blueline with the puck, as bodies went in towards Leighton and somehow a little wrist shot snuck through and made it a 1-goal game late. 

Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be enough, especially with an empty-net goal by Jeff Carter to seal the deal and the Flyers managed to take good care of their home-ice, winning both of their games and now get to go back to Chicago with a series that is tied at two.  It looked like quite a game from the highlights and the first part that I was able to catch, so hopefully I'll be able to catch all of Game Five, which should be a doozy.

Game-Winning Goals
So, now that we are through Game Four, I could have a look at the game-winning goals again. This should provide some ample separation between the game recap and the pool recap, so we'll go with this. In Game Four, it was Ville Leino who snuck another point out of the pool with his game-winner on Friday night.  That was his second game-winner of these playoffs and he's quickly becoming the player I wish I had in the pool, but didn't... there always seems to be one every year.

For players in the pool, both Dustin Byfuglien and Daniel Briere lead the way with 4 bonus points each this year, which looks good on both teams in the Cup Finals, each having a player in this category.  It would be awfully fitting for either one of these two to score another winner to lift their team to the Championship, wouldn't it?

In the pool, Russ D. continues to lead this category, now with 17 bonus points this year.  He's up in 5th place in the standings, thanks in part to his lucky player decisions, in terms of those extra points.  1st place, Scott G., he is alone in 2nd place in the category with 16 bonus points.  Nice to see them helping him along in the pool.

Since this post is getting to be so long, I thought I'd add another picture.

So, now to the pool standings and what it all meant in the end. The best player in the game for points in the pool was actually Duncan Keith of the Blackhawks, who tallied 3 assists, but you have to be on the winning side to get your picture posted. Two teams in the top seven were able to make good on Keith's effort, Derek B. moved into 3rd place and Russ D. moved into 5th.

But let's talk turkey, the all-important 1st place prize at the end of the rainbow.  Scott G. managed to extend the lead to 4 points over Myles D., thanks to a Kimmo Timonen point to Chris Pronger's zero, while Brian Campbell's goal was cancelled out by Patrick Kane's assist.  Unfortunately, in a 5-3 game, there wasn't a lot of points up at the top, but that's one of the breaks of this pool, that's for sure.

The lead has been extended slightly and we'll now have at least six games to work through, with a good possibility of this being a seven game series.  Roll on, Sunday!