Before I say anything else, the pic of the Flyers bench below was stolen unceremoniously from the Puck Doctors. You oughtta surf their site, yo.

All right. The Pittsburgh Penguins have dodged two bullets now, coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the first round to force a game six. Game four was a laugher – Philly wasn’t even in the building, and the Pens had something to prove. They scored at will, putting five pucks past each of the Flyer goalies for a 10-3 win.

Game five was a different story. The Flyers took a 2-1 lead into the second period, and Marc-Andre Fleury shut. the. door. He made consecutive, point blank saves on Danny Briere. He stopped shots by fighting through screens. He made positional saves when he had no idea where the puck was. He was, simply, the best player in a Pittsburgh Penguin uniform.

I’ve only got three things to say before hitting the sack:

1. The first three games of this series were street fights — much like the final two games in the regular season between these two teams, they were ugly, brutal, bloody and then ugly and brutal some more — and the Flyers won all three. The next two contests were hockey games — you know, with skating, passing, thinking & stuff? — and they went to Pittsburgh. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out each team’s strategy going into game six.
2. The Vancouver Canucks need to take a page out of Pittsburgh’s book. They need to remember that they are the favourite here — the Canucks don’t need to play a boring, shut down, defensive LA Kings game to win. In fact, playing neutral zone hockey and horseshoe offense along the boards just gives the Kings exactly what they want. Vancouver needs to attack, spend as much time in the offensive zone as possible, and penetrate into the middle of the ice. Whether or not Daniel feels he can go for game 5, the Canucks need to put the heads of Kings D on swivels with short passes and lots of movement. They’ve done it for two years, won two Presidents’ Trophies and came a game away from a Stanley Cup that way. They shouldn’t change now.
3. Congratulations to the Nashville Predators on surviving the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second consecutive year. That said, if Brendan Shanahan and the NHL had done their jobs correctly, one of the two men pictured below would be in the middle of a lengthy suspension right now. The other is going golfing, and might be retiring before the off-season is through.