Imperfection, Thy Name Is Game 1 Of The 2010 Stanley Cup Finals

The Philadelphia Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks had a rocking start to the pre-season playing a 6-5 thriller.......wait, what, this was a Stanley Cup Final game? Oh my goodness what a disaster.

The game was back-and-forth, jittery, nervous, and never had any real flow to it. Ville Leino got the scoring going and the Flyers probably felt pretty darn good scoring right at the end of the 1st period, but Michael Leighton could not save them on the end. Not only could he not save them, Leighton's play was downright deplorable. Not every goal was his fault, but enough to make me scream and cry uncle. His angles were not sharp at all, his rebound control was bad even for him, and he just did not look confident at all out there. It had gotten so bad that they pulled Leighton for the returning Brian Boucher.

Boucher played the end of the 2nd and the 3rd, and while he played well for the most part, he was at fault for giving up the game-winning goal in the 3rd period. If he as much as sticks his right pad out, the Blackhawks would not have taken a 6-5 lead and the whole game would have been different.

Right now the Flyers have a real problem with their defensive corps. Aside from Pronger and at times Timonen, the defense played awful and got no support from the 3rd pairing. Carle struggled, Coburn struggled, and Ryan Parent proved to Peter Laviolette that he is a complete goatfuck on the ice. He played 1 shift all game, yet on that shift, he was almost by himself responsible for the Blackhawks getting their 1st goal of the game. He played 41 seconds all game and ended at a -1. With Parent's ineptness, that leaves the Flyers with 5 defensemen, with one of them, Lukas Krajicek, being only a step above Ryan Parent Goatfuck status. At this point, the Flyers need to call up Philadelphia's favorite Latvian, Oskars Bartulis, as frankly, they do not get worse than Parent, and Timonen and Pronger can't play all game, especially when Coburn and Carle have down games.

The thing that worries me the most about this game is the way that things seemed to settle down in the 3rd and for the 1st 13 minutes, the Flyers managed 2 unremarkable shots on Antti Niemi. That allowed Niemi to finally settle down into the game and weather the late barrage of chances by the Flyers. While he gave up 5 goals this game, all 5 came in the first 2 periods. Believe it or not, Niemi actually has some positive momentum going from his performance. A settled down Antti Niemi is a very dangerous and very good goalkeeper.

Another negative from this game: the officiating. I do not know what they were drinking, but they must have seen a team from Pennsylvania in the Stanley Cup Finals and automatically assumed it was Pittsburgh playing, as that is how the Flyers got treated by the officials. They got the Crosby treatment for the game. No penalties were called against them although there were at least 2 instances of very obvious non-called penalties that not even the strongest Flyers homer would have complained about. And what sucks is the Flyers were unable to win the game. As a matter of fact, the Flyers had 1 game in the regular season where they went penalty less and they lost that game as well.

Don't even get me started on how awful the Flyers were from the faceoff circle. The Flyers are not winning this series if they do not improve that.

Now moving onto the positives: the Briere, Hartnell, Leino line continues to impress. Leino scored. Hartnell scored. Briere scored. And in addition that line combined for 5 assists. Regardless of what changes Peter Laviolette decides to make, that is one line that should stay perfectly in tact for the duration of the series. Throughout the night, the Chicago Blackhawks defense did not seem to be able to consistently shut down the Flyers offense. Whether it was jitters or the Flyers solved them, I can't say for sure, but you do not score 5 goals in 2 periods with the opposing team's defense playing well.

One last thing I want to point out. For all the talk about the the stars this team has, look who scored all the goals. For the Flyers: Leino, Hartnell, Briere, Betts, and Asham. For the Flyers: Brouwer, Bolland, Sharp, Versteeg, Brouwer, and Koepcky. Noticeably absent: Richards, Carter, Gagne, Giroux, Toews, Kane, Byfuglien, Hossa. You know, all the big name players that were supposed to be scoring goals in this series.

The Flyers did not go into Chicago needing a sweep, but with Chicago being a strong road team, a split will be awfully good of the Flyers to get. They had it at times in this game but goaltending and bad defense blew it. The good news is they have one more chance to go back to Philadelphia with a real good feeling about their chances in this series. Is it time to panic yet? Absolutely not. But a win in Game 2 would provide them a real nice luxury, whereas another loss in Chicago would call upon some do-or-die situations in Philadelphia.

For those that missed the game and want to see what a sloppy finals game looks like, here are the highlights.