The Flyers have all kinds of reasons to be nervous going into Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday in Philadelphia, and all kinds of reasons to be confident.
If it happens on ice and it involves hitting and scoring, The Times's Slap Shot blog is on it.
They lost the first two games of the series to the Chicago Blackhawks, but narrowly and on the road. Both recent history and distant history suggest that the Flyers can readily climb back or that the Blackhawks could let their 2-0 lead slip through their fingers.
"If you're asking if this team can overcome obstacles or overcome adversity, we're so far beyond that," Coach Peter Laviolette told reporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday, noting that at one point this season the Flyers were 29th over all in the N.H.L. standings.
"I don't think you get to this point in the season where you're 29th at Christmas and not be able to overcome adversity," he said, ticking off the Flyers' high points: their playoff qualification on the regular season's last shot; their rally from a three-games-to-none deficit against the Boston Bruins in the second round of the playoffs; and their bounceback from season-long injury epidemics.
"This team is capable," Laviolette said. "I'm 100 percent confident that this team is capable."
The Flyers take heart in the closeness of the first two games: a 6-5 last-goal-wins display of pond hockey Saturday; and a 2-1 loss Monday that required a superb third-period performance by Chicago goalie Antti Niemi to stave off a Philadelphia onslaught.
"We're still feeling good about it," said Flyers forward Danny Briere, who, like Laviolette, said the Flyers "outchanced" the Blackhawks in Game 2. "Obviously, we would rather be up 2-0 or even 1-1, but we've been in the same situation before, and we believe we can come back. We believe in our team."
That is the optimism part, but there is also cause for nervousness.
The Blackhawks, for example, are working on a seven-game road winning streak. There is also evidence that Laviolette has been outcoached by the Blackhawks' Joel Quenneville.
One reason for Chicago's Game 2 victory was a brilliant stroke of intuition from Quenneville on the face-off immediately after Marian Hossa's goal, which gave the Hawks a 1-0 lead late in the second period.
Quenneville, counterintuitively, put the big fourth-line wing Ben Eager out on the first line alongside Jonathan Toews and Dustin Byfuglien. The low-scoring Eager, skating in place of the glamorous but undersize sniper Patrick Kane, struck for what turned out to be the winning goal 28 seconds later.
Quenneville said after the game that Eager is strong on the forecheck, and "hopefully he creates a little bit of space."
Quenneville's brief but effective first-line adjustment stood in contrast with Laviolette's first-line tinkering, which did not work at all. He dressed Dan Carcillo to skate on the Flyers' first line alongside Mike Richards and Jeff Carter in Game 2, and although Carcillo, nicknamed Car Bomb, certainly stirred things up physically, the Flyers got off only three shots in the first period.
Carcillo was dropped to the third line for the rest of the game (perhaps his accidental flattening of Carter had something to do with it), and with Simon Gagne back in his accustomed place on the top line, the Flyers' offense improved. In the third period Gagne scored the Flyers' only goal, which raises the question of how well they might have done if Gagne had played the whole game on the first line.
These are reasons for the Flyers to be nervous — but there are reasons for the Blackhawks to be nervous after, in the words of Chicago's Dave Bolland, stealing the first two games.
Chicago is the 34th team to win the first two games of a best-of-seven Stanley Cup finals at home. Of the 33 previous teams to do so, 31 went on to win the Cup — but the two teams that failed were last year's Red Wings and the 1971 Blackhawks.
After blowing their two-games-to-none advantage, the '71 Blackhawks held a 2-0 lead halfway through Game 7 at a humid Chicago Stadium. Fog rising from the ice caused goalie Tony Esposito to lose Jacques Lemaire's routine slap shot from the red line, and the Montreal Canadiens rallied to win, 3-2, a result that still haunts Chicago hockey fans.
Then there is the intimation of bad luck for the Blackhawks, who have lost five straight Cup finals since winning in 1961.
On Sunday evening Kane and his family, who are from Buffalo, ate dinner at a Chicago restaurant. Also at the restaurant, according to The Chicago Tribune, was the former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy, who went over to Kane's table to wish him well.
Levy, of course, was the Bills' coach when they lost four straight Super Bowls.
In American football, you have to try to bring down your opponent.
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