A feat that would make heads explode
“Well,” Tom Yarnall was telling me, “that would really suck!”
I ran into Tom the other night at Hal’s Bar & Grill in the North Hills, where the Penguins were losing to the Detroit Red Wings on eight screens.
Joe’s been going to Penguins games since their invention in 1967, and he was sitting next to his buddy Tom Foley, the back of whose tshirt said back-to-back Cups and who dismissed our baseline notion with a bit of a verbal sneer.
“Oh no, they already beat the Flyers,” Tom said. “They won’tlose to the Flyers.”
Tom’s well-placed point wasthat Penguins and Flyers had met just two days before and the Penguins won for the fourth time this season, the first season-sweep of Philadelphia in 11 years, a sweep featuring five Penguin goals inevery game.
But there is something oddly karmic about what’s happening in Philadelphia, something that might have escaped your notice. After the Eagles won the Super Bowl in February for their first NFL title in 57 years, the 76ers (absent from the NBA playoffs the past six years) won nine of their next 11 and the Flyers (absent from the NHL playoffs in four of the past six seasons) won 10 of their next 11. Soon thereafter, the Phillies signed free agent pitcher Jake Arrieta to a 2018 salary of $30 million (just a little higher than the Pirates would have offered if they, you know, made free agent offers).
“It’s amazing how that goes — amazing; it’s like a kind of peer pressure from another organization,” said Penguins assistant coach Mark Recchi, the Hall of Fame forward who did two tours of duty each with the Flyers and Penguins. “I know the 76ers are talking big things and could upset somepeople.”
Recchi knows as well as anyone how Flyers-beatPens-on-way-to-long-lost-Cup narrative could upset some people. Metaphorically, I asked him, would heads explode at both ends of the state?
“I’m sure they would,” the Wreckin’ Ball said. “Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state are very proud people and very proud hockey fans. It’dbe devastating for some.”
No doubt on dat, as an old hockey coach used to say, and it would only take one neatly placed postseason elbowto bring Penguins-Flyers to its traditional full boil. But the current fact is, the modern Pennsylvania rivalry looksdownright civil by comparison.
“I’m not sure there’s the same animosity,” said Hall of Fame broadcaster Doc Emrick, who handled NBC’s play-by-play here last Sunday. “I was assigned to opening night, and Sunday’s game is all I’ve been in town for all year, so maybe I’m not the best one to assess it, but my one observation is that the games don’t have the coaches crawling over the glass to get at each other anymore.”
True. It was six long years ago today that then coaches Dan Bylsma and Peter Laviolette tried to tangle with each other by climbing atop the dasher boards in front of their respective benches, attempting to cross the moat inhabitedby Pierre McGuire in his ever-present headset. Laviolette almost got there, but Bylsma was impeded by then Penguins assistant Tony Granato, who was first to scale the boards, blocking both Bylsma’s path and his view.
Soon thereafter, the Flyers would eliminate the Penguin sin six games, then eliminate themselves by dropping four of their next five to the Devils.
It’s the Devils, it so happens, that Foley feels are far more likely to be ruinous to the defending Stanley Cup champions.
“I think the worst thing that could happen to the Penguins in the playoffs is if New Jersey gets in,” Joe said over another Rolling Rock. “They haven’t beat them yet [which was true until the Penguins won in overtime in New Jersey Thursday night]. The Devils are young and they’re hungry and sometimes it looked like the Penguins weren’t even in the game. As two-time defending champs, the Penguins will have a target on their backs, especially in the playoffs. The Devils scareme.”
Everyone is free to customize their own nightmares in this exercise, but some who enjoy being spooked might still fixate on the Flyers, and for several reasons.
We’ve seen the Penguins’ severe road struggles, but their mission to secure home ice is probably a wasted effort when it comes to the Flyers, whoare 13-3-0-3 at what’s now the PPG Pizzeria. Philly has a better points percentage in the Penguins’ building than the Penguins have in the Penguins’ building.
“They have played well in our building, done a really good job with that,” said Recchi, who sees these particular Flyers as demonstrably dangerous. “They’ve got a great bunch of young defensemen who get up ice really well. If we’re not sharp in those areas, they’re going to take advantage. They have good character guys like Wayne Simmonds. And they have ClaudeGiroux having a great bounce-backseason.”
Andif it happens they enter the postseason against Pittsburgh, they’ll have the good fortune not to be facing a club with two Stanley Cup-winning goaltenders, as Marc-Andre Fleury will start the playoffs on the other side of the NHL bracket. Matt Murray, with two Cups on his resume, hasn’t exactly performed to thatlevel this year.
“I’m not worried about results,” Murray said after last week’s Flyers encounter. “It’s all about how you’re feeling. If you get a little bit better every day, then we’ll get to wherewe want to go.”
Even if the net-minding help is from Casey DeSmith orTristan Jarry?
“You always have a special bond with your goalie partners,” Murray said.
So if you were looking for an answer to that one-of-akind riddle: What do you get when you cross a Penguin withthe ghost of Will Rogers? Well, you get Matt Murray saying this: “I’ve never met another goalie I didn’t like.” Uh-huh. To be perfect clear then, this doesn’t say the Flyers will beat the Penguins, or that the Flyers will even play the Penguins. It only says that if the Flyers, given the roiling karma of Philly’s sportscape rightnow, happen to win it all, Philadelphia will be the City ofChampions.
Oh that will go over great, right?
Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state are very proud people and very proud hockey fans. It’d be devastating for some.” — Mark Recchi