FLYERS NEWS

The dream is dead. Well for this year anyway. The Flyers had to knock off the Penguins in game 6 at the Wachovia center to keep their season alive. Despite taking a 3-0 lead early in the 2nd period they did not. Sometimes it just isn't your year. 30 saves from Marty Biron and a goal and an assist from Danny Briere just weren't enough. The Flyers just seemed to run out of gas after the Pens rallied back to tie it, and played very sloppy throughout the 3rd period. Frankly the game was really a microcosm of the Flyer's season. They started strong, faced a little adversity, and just went away for a while. Unfortunately there wasn't enough time for then to recover and come on strong again. Late in the first period Mike Knuble scored for a 1-0 lead and Joffrey Lupul followed a minute later for a 2-0 lead. Early in the 2nd period Danny Briere scored off the power play for a 3-0 lead and the celebration was on, the Flyers were going to force a game 7. There was no way Biron would allow the Pens to come back from three goals down would he? Unfortunately Dan Carcillo then made a huge mistake picking a fight with Maxim Talbot. Yes he won the fight easily and fired up the home crowd, but at the same time he unwittingly lit a fire under the Pens. No sooner was Carcillo in the box when ex-Flyer Ruslan Fedotenko put the Pens on the board scoring off a crazy deflection to cut the lead to 3-1. Two minutes later, another crazy deflection and another goal this time scored by Mark Eaton and Pittsburgh had cut it to 3-2. Late in the period "the Kid" Sidney Crosby finished the comeback off with yet another crazy deflection to knot it up at 3. Early in the 3rd period the Flyers somehow got lost in their own zone, allowing Sergei Gonchar to freely blast one past Biron from just inside the blue line for a 4-3 Pens lead. From there Biron bared down and kept it 4-3 until he was pulled in favor of the extra attacker with under 2 minutes to play. Sadly just as they began playing with the extra attacker Jeff Carter weakly gift wrapped a pass right onto the stick of Crosby who raced in to score an empty netter to sink the Flyers 5-3. Well better luck next year guys.