‘Tis the season to hate, fight and crush the Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-lyers

In the spirit of the Christmas season, as a Pittsburgh Penguins blogger, I must formally throw the gauntlet down to amplify or create schism, disunity, hatred, discord and rivalry between Them and Us.  Season of good cheer?  Peace on earth?  Get real.  Round 2 of the Pennsylvania state rivalry between the Philadelphia Flyers (Them) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (Us) begins again tonight at Mellon Arena when the two teams meet for the second time this season.

When the Penguins marched into Philadelphia earlier this season, both clubs had expectations of competing for not only the Atlantic Division crown, but also the Eastern Conference title.  On October 8, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia met in a hard-fought game with the Penguins edging the Flyers 5-4.  Evgeni Malkin led the way for Pittsburgh scoring a power-play goal in the first minute of the game and finished with two points on the evening.  This game also featured the infamous ending with two seconds left in the contest where Mike Richards ran into Marc-Andre Fleury precipitating two bizarre scenes: Chris Pronger choking Chris Kunitz by the collar of his sweater and Scott Hartnell possibly biting Kris Letang’s finger in a scrum behind the net.

Since that game, the two teams have gone in opposite directions.  The Penguins are 22-10-1, good for second in the Atlantic and fourth in the conference while Philadelphia is 15-15-1, mired in tenth place in the East.  Philadelphia fired head coach John Stevens on December 4 replacing him with Peter Laviolette, who guided Carolina to the 2006 Stanley Cup championship.  In a small sample size, the Flyers have subsequently done no better, posting a 2-4-0 mark since the coaching change.

All of this recent Philadelphia Pholly is nothing but sweet music in the ears of any long-time Penguins’ backer.  Revenge is a strong emotion in any sports rivalry and fans of a certain middle age can remember when the Flyers dominated and crushed the Penguins’ hopes routinely during the playoffs.  In 1989, despite Mario Lemieux scoring a playoff-record tying eight points and “Downtown” Robbie Brown windmilling his arm while celebrating a goal while evading the mad pursuit of goalie Ron Hextall in Game Five of the old Patrick Division Final against Philadelphia, the Flyers came back to win Games Six and Seven to end Pittsburgh’s season.  In 1997, the Flyers made quick work of the Pens in the first round, winning in five games in what would be Lemieux’s last games before his first retirement.  In 2000, the Penguins won the first two games on the road, but the series turned in the epic Game Four quintuple-overtime win by Philadelphia who won the series in six.

However, recent history is on the side of the Penguins.  The Pens defeated the Flyers in all eight contests back in 2006-07 including a game on national Canadian television when Sidney Crosby scored a career-high six points.  The following season, Pittsburgh breezed by Philadelphia in five games to capture the Conference title and last year, who can forget the comeback from three goals down to win Game Six in Philadelphia, ending the Flyers’ season once again?

The inimitable Pensblog has already settled into the spirit of the season with an honour roll of reasons to pile on to Philadelphia’s misery (note, some contents are not safe for work/school): http://thepensblog.com/pensblog/december-2009/time-to-hate.html

Even the Penguins’ official website has dedicated a front-page link today to celebrate the question “What’s the greatest Pens vs. Flyers moment ever?”

Undoubtedly, the atmosphere tonight will be raucous and playoff-like with the two teams battling hard for every square inch of ice.  It will also be interesting to observe if there are any noticeable changes to the Philadelphia plan of attack against the Penguins since the last meeting and since Laviolette took the reins.  He has tried to implement an aggressive, up-tempo system to take advantage of the Flyers’ scoring talent, after years of the questionably successful Philadelphia tradition of initimidation and emphasis on physical play.  As always, there will be plenty of storylines that develop in the game between the decades-old rivals and the best part is, if the grudges don’t develop tonight, they’ll get a chance again real quick – on Thursday evening in Philadelphia.

Sources: penguins.nhl.com, Yahoo! Sports Penguins page