Claude Giroux scored 5:59 into overtime Wednesday night to give the Philadelphia Flyers a 4-3 win over the Blackhawks in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday night.
The victory gets the Flyers back in the series. The Hawks still own a 2-games-to-1 edge with Game 4 scheduled for Friday night in Philadelphia.
Of course, panic will now ensue in the streets of Chicago. The Hawks lost a game. How dare they?
There will be no panic here, however. I'm not much of a worrier in these types of situations. This is the Hawks first loss since May 9. I wasn't expecting them to sweep. It is only one loss. Sometimes, you lose to good teams and Philadelphia is a good team. I might start to worry if the Flyers win three games in this series, but not until then.
From my perspective, the biggest difference in Game 3 was special teams. The Hawks outscored the Flyers 3-2 at even strength. However, Philadelphia went 2 for 3 on the power play, while the Hawks failed to score on all three of their chances with the man advantage. As a matter of fact, Chicago has not scored on the power play yet in this series. That's one thing that needs to change for Game 4.
I thought a critical moment came early in the second period. Duncan Keith had just scored for the Hawks at 2:49 to knot the score at 1-1. Philadelphia's defensive stalwart, Chris Pronger, was whistled for high-sticking at 3:36. The Flyers had their best penalty-killer sitting in the box. That was a golden chance for the Hawks to grab the lead, but they didn't generate much on the power play.
The Flyers got the next power play after that, and Scott Hartnell scored at 9:55 to give Philly a 2-1 lead. The Hawks battled back to take a 3-2 lead. Brent Sopel, of all people, tied the game at 17:52 of the second. Patrick Kane's breakaway goal at 2:50 of the third gave the Hawks a brief advantage. Ville Leino scored for Philly just 20 seconds later to tie the game and set the stage for the overtime.
I give credit to the Flyers. This was a must-win game for them, and they won it. On to the next game.
So now our author have resorted to whining about the refs now that the Flyers tied this series at 2? Maybe next time he rips me about whining about the refs, I will be sure to remember his comments about how the Flyers are getting away with what they're doing.
Here's a link that might be useful:
http://www.literacydirectory.org/
Timberwolf,
There's a difference between complaining about officiating just because it benefits teams from Chicago and complaining about it because the discrepency in calls isn't fair. The Flyers were the 2nd most penalized team during the regular season and the most penalized team during the playoffs, yet the Hawks hadn't had more power play time than the Flyers in any game of this series until Game 5. The Flyers were not called for a ton of obvious cross-checking and interferance infractions. They are a very dirty team. Meanwhile, the Hawks are far from dirty, being in the bottom 1/4 of the league in PIM for the whole season. Teams don't suddenly change up their discipline level overnight. The Flyers were just getting away with a lot.
There's a big difference between evaluating an officiating crew's performance based on hate for a certain city's teams and evaluating them based on facts, like Jason has done here (and I have in the previous paragraph).