Flyers finally beat Pens, current winning ways suddenly seem more legit

Hope you were wearing your party hats last night kiddies, because the Flyers were throwing a bash up in Pittsburgh so amazing that it made a P. Diddy party look like a Colin McGlinchey party--- scarcely attended, poorly conceived and unrelentingly dull.

Oh well, the point is last night the Flyers scored early and they scored often, usually in bunches on route to beating their arch rival Pittsburgh Penguins, a team more evil Lex Luthor, The Joker, Pearl Forrester from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and P. Diddy combined.

Going into last night's road game, one of the knocks against the Flyers 5-1-1 stretch was that they weren't exactly beating the cream of the NHL's crop. Heck, the Flyers weren't even beating the equivalent to the stuff that gets saved and fed to the cows, but they were handling the NHL's version of gourds and those weird little things of corn that always show up around Halloween with a sort of careless ease.

Basically, the Flyers were beating seasonal decoration teams.

Well no more! Who cares that the Penguins were 1-5-0 since Christmas and that their power play is inexplicably the worst in the NHL, converting at a inept 14.4 percent this season? How in the world is that even possible!?! Do they realize that they have two of the top scorers in the NHL in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin at their disposal? Granted Power play quarterback and all around overrated defenseman Sergei Gonchar has been in and out of the line up with various injuries, but they haven't exactly sparkled like Edward Cullen in Ocean City at high noon with him in the line up either. Also, if Pittsburgh's success is predicated solely on one guy, shouldn't they be playing in Madison Square Garden and wearing blue?

ZING!

The Flyers jumped on the Pens early last night, with Jeff Carter scoring his 15th of the year on a very abbreviated Flyers power play--- it was scheduled to last about 15 seconds--- with a nice spin-o-rama wrist shot that blazed past Penguins starter Marc-Andre Fleury. Carter added another scorching wrister nine and a half minutes into the third period for his seond goal of the game. Roughly 31 seconds after his first, however, rookie James van Riemsdyk took an excellent feed from Arron Asham, skated in on a breakaway and beat Fleury five-hole with a pretty move.

It wasn't going to be an easy night though, Pens captain Sidney Crosby who only scores against the Flyers at this point netted a goal a little over a minute later to make things interesting. That's pretty much the story of the game actually. Every time the Flyers built themselves a comfortable lead, the Pens cut into it and made things interesting (read: nerve-wracking).

Later in the period Matt Carle scored his third goal of the year on the Flyers second power play of the game in a nice slap shot. Matt Cooke would score for the Pens shortly after, taking a nice feed from Jeff Carter, who doesn't discriminate based on jersey color and, despite his two goals, still managed to finish a -1. Wonders will never cease, but that stat is WAY over used anyway.

Chris Pronger resumed the Flyers scoring a minute and a half into the second period with a wrist shot from the blue line, making things 4-2 and ending Fleury's night after he made 11 saves on 15 chances. In came back-up Brent Johnson and in came van Riemsdyk on another Asham set up breakaway less then a minute later. Same move, different goalie, same result for JVR who now has ten goals on the season. Sidney Crosby scored on a ridiculously broken play around the halfway mark of the period, a play which could have been negated by Malkin being pretty off-sides but "surprisingly" wasn't.

Simon Gagne scored a shorthanded goal with a little under three minutes to play in the period to make things 6-3... except wait. It somehow wasn't called a goal on the ice, even though Johnson had the puck in his possession and was camping out inside his own net. The refs went to video replay, which couldn't show the puck actually in the net so no goal. The video replay was right, the only thing indicating that the puck was in the net was common sense, there were no shots of the puck past the goal line as is required. The real problem here is the idiotic ref who called it no goal on the ice. Johnson was IN HIS NET, not pushed in, he just sort of drifted that way. How could the puck not be in the net if every part of the goalie who has it IS? Won't argue with the video call, but the officials dropped the ball there... hold on. It's the NHL! I forgot, silly me. I'm supposed to be used to this by now.

After Carter scored in the third to really make it 6-3... really... Pens enforcer extraordinaire Mike Rupp scored his 11th goal of the year on a Carter-esque wrist shot. Let me clarify for those of you keeping score at home... the Penguins CAN'T score on the power play with Crosby, Malkin, Kunitz, Letang, Guerin, Gonchar, Goligoski leading the charge, but Mike Rupp, a guy who isn't even a good enforcer has almost doubled his previous career high 45 games into the season. What the heck is going on with that team? I sure hope that there is some crazy person sitting in a Johnny Depp poster covered basement in Pittsburgh writing a blog called "The Penguin Files" asking this very same question.

Shadow Richards secured the game with an empty net goal set up by the insane speed of Darroll Powe as he tore past Jordan Staal and flipped the loose puck out in front of the abandoned net, where after much struggle Richards was able to knock in his 19th goal of the season.

Michael Leighton had possibly the best game ever in which a goalie gave up four goals. He stopped 35 of 39 shots to pick up his career high seventh win. He made some absolutely spectacular saves at key points in the game and continues to make life difficult for both opponents and the Flyers, as former starter Ray Emery looms ready to return from injury. What will the team do? Leighton has been fantastic, Emery was fantastic to start the year before he got hurt and current backup Brian Boucher has carried this team for stretches as well.

It seems that almost every year the Flyers have a goalie controversy. Should this guy start or should that guy? Not this year though. GM Paul Holmgren fixed that nonsense. Now we have a should this guy, that guy, or that other guy start problem. The only thing better then a two-way goalie controversy is a three-way goalie controversy. Ah well, there are worse problems to have I suppose, like for example Mike Rupp outscoring your power play.

Well the orange and black are off until Saturday when they take on the Tampa Bay Lightning at 7 p.m. for a home game. The Flyers asked Tampa nicely to alter the game's start time to accommodate fans who would like to watch the Eagles playoff game which starts at 8 p.m., but the Lightning declined. They obliged the Flyers earlier in the season for a Phillies playoff game and the Flyers smoked them 6-2 that night, so its easy to see why they would be less then accommodating this time. Inglourious Flyers will be headed to the game so expect plenty of in depth analysis to go with my usual endless rambling.

Until then...