There was much doom and gloom after the Flyers lost the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals in Chicago.
Was the Western Conference that much better than the East? Was the Flyers' Cinderella story about to collapse one series too soon?
Ah, but the great equalizer came into play once the series shifted to Philadelphia -- home-ice advantage.
With the raucous Philly faithful screaming and cheering (and taunting, of course), the Flyers were able to turn those one-goal defeats in Chicago into wins in Philly.
And so now here we are, back in the town of Jake, Ellwood and Ray's Music Exchange, and the Blackhawks once again have home cooking (four whole fried chickens and a Coke?) on their side with a chance to take a 3-2 series advantage.
The problem for the Flyers: they have to win at least one game in Chicago to win the Stanley Cup. Game 5 could be their best bet. They're coming off back-to-back wins and have the Hawks on their heels. Like a frightened dog backed into a corner, the Hawks are going to come out showing their teeth Sunday night, hoping to get the bite back. It should be a raucous opening period, to say the least.
"Obviously, they're going to be pumped up to be in their building for Game 5," Danny Briere told the Inquirer. "We'll have to focus on the first 10 minutes, getting through that. We have to be ready to play."
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Forget about scoring early on, just surviving that first period will be key. Get through that early stretch and you'll not only take the crowd out of the game, but will let doubt sink deeper into the hearts and minds of the Hawks themselves.
Yes, it would be nice to win Game 5 and get to within one game of winning the Cup on home ice in Game 6. But the Flyers know that even if things don't go their way Sunday night, they're not going to go belly-up.
"We've kind of put ourselves in tough situations all year," center Mike Richards told the AP. "I remember early in the season, Chris (Pronger) and I talking about going through the adversity at an early point in the season will just make us better later on when we get to it. We went through a lot of it this year. We had a lot of ups and downs, and I think it really paid off when we got down 0-3 to Boston and plugged away and then 0-2 to Chicago here going home. When you go through things like that as a group and you come out on top like we did throughout the season -- making the playoffs like we did, through the Boston series -- I think it just sets up for having confidence in each other and not panicking and just being aware of what you can do as a group if you kind of stick to the system and stick to the plan."
We'd say that plan has been working so far in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Wouldn't you?
