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PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Flyers may only be prolonging their agony — but after three careless outings, they finally came through with a determined effort last night against their state rivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Flyers were much more physical and, for the first time in the NHL's Eastern Conference final series, established a daunting fore-check to snatch a 4-2 victory and overcome a major mental hurdle. They now know they can beat the Penguins.
But Pittsburgh leads the best-of-seven series 3-1, and returns to Mellon Arena for the fifth game on Sunday — a building the Penguins have gone a perfect 7-0 in the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring.
"We're not worried about our game," Penguins forward Jarkko Ruutu said. "We just lost our focus early in the game. We didn't deserve to win. But the fourth game is always the toughest to win. They got some breaks early and we took some stupid penalties."
Scottie Upshall of the Philadelphia Flyers checks Jordan Staal of the Pittsburgh Penguins during the third period of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
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The Flyers scored three times, twice on the power play, in the first period and then held off the speedy Penguins, who had outscored Philadelphia 11-5 in the first three games of the series.
The Penguins had surrendered just five power-play goals in 12 games, the fewest among the four playoff teams remaining, heading into last night's game. But after Joffrey Lupul scored with a shot that deflected off the stick of Pittsburgh defenceman Hal Gill, Flyers forwards Daniel Brière and Jeff Carter each added goals in man-advantage situations.
"They're a very good penalty-killing team, and sometimes you don't score on the initial shot, but you create secondary chances at the net," Flyers head coach John Stevens said. "I thought the power play did that early, and really gave us momentum."
Both Brière and Carter scored by getting to rebounds.
"Obviously, getting the lead was big for us, but we did some really good things in the game, especially early," Stevens said. "I just thought we'd come out with real good energy.
"We were skating with the puck. We had speed after [dumping in the] puck, which I thought made a difference. We started shooting the puck again. I think we were trying to pass the puck to the net."
After the Flyers put 18 shots on net in their 4-1 defeat in the third game, it certainly appeared that was the case. But the Flyers had 21 shots halfway through last night's game and were a much more determined team.
"I thought we were more patient," Flyers forward Mike Richards said. "We got it deep on the fore-check, and that allowed us to stay over top of them. It was similar to what they were doing to us in the first three games."
Stevens shuffled his lines in the hopes of shaking his players out of a three-game losing skid and the moves paid dividends in the opening 20 minutes.
Stevens placed Brière, who failed to score in the first three games, on the right wing with centre Mike Richards and Scott Hartnell. Vaclav Prospal was moved to a line with R.J. Umberger and Lupul. Patrick Thoresen was back on the fourth line in place of rookie Steve Downie, who had a couple of horrid games in which two of his giveaways led to critical goals for the Penguins.
The Penguins were definitely the better team in the second half last night, getting two goals from Jordan Staal, who spent Wednesday in Thunder Bay attending the funeral of his 83-year-old grandfather, John Staal, to trim the Flyers' lead to 3-2.
But Lupul allowed the capacity crowd of 19,972 at the Wachovia Center to relax after he scored his second goal of the game into the empty net in the final minutes.
"When you get that three-goal lead, it's just I guess human nature," Brière said of his team's late-game collapse. "You kind of sit back. You don't want to make any mistakes. You know, it's always tough. When you have that two- or three-goal lead, sometimes you play a little bit more patiently.
"What made us so successful in the first two periods was we were always moving, always going."
