By Tim Panaccio, CSNPhilly.com
The book
Throughout these Stanley Cup playoffs, Flyers coach Peter Laviolette has had some gems.
He compared Sunday's 7-4 thrashing by the Blackhawks in Game 5 to chapters of a book.
"One thing I've learned about the playoffs is that one game is one game," he said. "This is just one page of the story. Tonight, it was their page."
The question is, how many pages are left in this last chapter of the Cup Final? Is it one - Game 6 - or will it be two, assuming the Flyers can force a Game 7.
That the Flyers have not won on the road in this series is alarming, if you bleed orange 'n black. When you don't have home ice, you are forced to win at least one game in the other guy's building.
The beauty of a Game 7, however, is that anything can happen. How many people gave the Penguins any hope of winning on the road last spring in Detroit in Game 7?
But we're jumping ahead of ourselves here. The Flyers have to show they can come back with the same, steely mentality they have all through the playoffs in Game 6 in Philly.
This writer is confident that the Flyers will play their best hockey there. One way or another, it will be the final game played in Philly this season.
It doesn't have to be the Flyers' "best" game. You can win ugly in the Final as we saw in Game 1.
What's the message from the Flyers' leadership group?
"Just play better than today," said team captain Mike Richards.
"Play like we did, what gave us success. Stop turning pucks over to a great offensive team."
The Flyers have shown great resiliency all throughout the spring.
"I think so," Richards said. "I mean, we have to. Obviously it's an important game to say the least on Wednesday. We have some time to recover here. We have some time to look at some things and do things differently.
"But overall, it's just us playing hockey and playing the Flyer hockey that we've been prone to, to have success."
Chris Pronger would agree.
"You know what, we play very well at home," Pronger said. "Obviously, our crowd will be behind us much like theirs was [in Game 5]. We seem to like to make things difficult on ourselves. So this is no different."
The Flyers have taken the longer, more winding road these entire playoffs. Nothing new there. Just a different challenge. A different kind of elimination.
Who's the goalie?
Laviolette would not comment on his starting goalie. Both times he pulled Michael Leighton in the series for Brian Boucher, he got no winning results. All it did was throw a cloud of suspicion over the team whether the coach was panicking.
Briere's injury
Laviolette would not comment on the centre's badly cut right eye. That no high-stick was called on Duncan Keith was outrageous given the damage to Briere's eye.
On Jeff Carter
He has really struggled with his right foot injury in this series and comes into Game 6 with nothing more than a goal and an assist.
"Yeah, it felt like he has battled a lot," Laviolette said. "He has had two, one-month injuries or more than that in the last two-and-a-half months to three months. He doesn't have a lot of time under his belt. I think he was taking strides up until last night, and without specifically talking about Jeff in general, we weren't good enough as a team.
"And it didn't seem like anybody brought their best game. We've got to get back as a team and make sure we're ready to play our brand of hockey, our style of hockey in our building with our fans tomorrow night. We have to make sure we're ready to win one hockey game."
Coaching with/against Pronger
Laviolette has seen both ends, going back to the 2006 Cup Final when Pronger was in Edmonton and Laviolette coached the Carolina Hurricanes.
"He's on the ice for half the game," Laviolette said. "It draws attention. There's probably not many other defencemen you would want on your team in a playoff series or in a game that meant something [other] than Chris Pronger.
"He's a money player. He plays half the game. So it draws conversations from the other side. It did in Carolina on what to try to do. He's - I guess a lot would say - he's the best at what he does."
