The Sports Granola

A LOT OF truths tend to get told when game follows game follows game, every other night, for as long as the mathematics allow. Flaws are exposed and excellence is revealed, but it isn’t that, not exactly.

Mostly, a best-of-seven series is where preconceptions go to die. In this one, gone now is the notion that the Pittsburgh Penguins are all about Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, that they are superstars driving a lightly populated bus.

This is so wrong.

The Penguins are a team, in every sense.

The Flyers probably knew it all along - and now that they are down by 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals, they are not likely to forget. However and whenever it ends, tonight or thereafter, the Flyers and the people who follow them and the people who have watched the Penguins in this series, and all spring, have been left with an enduring impression of skill and teamwork coming at them in black-clad waves.

And defense. The Penguins’ defense really is the story of this series - team defense, persistent defense, real strength and sureness with the puck. We can talk about Malkin and Crosby, and they do have scary skill. We can talk about their speed and their explosiveness because it is all very real.

But defense is winning these games. Commitment to a system, an entire team-wide mind-set, is what the Penguins are using to crush the Flyers.

“To be a winner, it’s tough,” said Michel Therrien, the Penguins coach. “It’s demanding to be a winner. I believe right now we are starting to be recognized as winners.”

Prohibitive favorites now against the Flyers, the Penguins practiced yesterday at the Wachovia Center and said all the stuff you’re supposed to say when you are up 3-0 in a series. I mean, who would have guessed that the Flyers would be desperate tonight and that the fourth win was the toughest? I had never heard that one before.

The Penguins have been attending to every detail. Take this whole trap business. That the Penguins have been doing it, trapping in the neutral zone, in bigger and bigger stretches of games, is clear enough. It should not shock anybody because it remains a winning strategy, even in the new NHL.

It is just that, given the advance billing, given Crosby, given Malkin, given the rock-’em sock-’em robots nature of most of the Flyers-Penguins games this season, the delicate art of strangling the life out of your opponent did not seem as if it would be a featured part of the playbook. But here we are.

“If we give up one or two goals a game, we know we have a good chance to win,” winger Petr Sykora said. “Even our scoring lines know that if we play good defense and get a lead, and make the other team come to us . . . we can feed off of turnovers.”

It is exactly what is happening, and Sykora knows of what he speaks. He won a Cup with the New Jersey Devils, trapping to the limits, in 2000, and he reached the Stanley Cup finals another time with the Devils and another time with Anaheim. But for many of the rest, this is newish territory, something that Therrien has been trying to instill and install over the last 2 years.

“It takes time,” Therrien said. “It doesn’t come naturally, especially with skill players. But they buy into it. This is why they understand, and they play well defensively. They stick to the plan the way we try to play our system. Well, they’re going to get rewards.”

So far, the coach said, the players have bought in to the point where you have 20-year-old kids on the bench scolding their teammates when they freelance out of the confines of the defensive game plan.

To Therrien, “that is leadership, as far as I’m concerned.” The result is this fine web in which the Flyers find themselves entangled.

As Crosby said, “I know that going into games, we know if we take care of our own end, hopefully, our skill will take care of itself. But . . . you have to believe in it, and you have to believe in what you do is going to work, and we do that.

“We have that belief, and I think that’s the most important thing. There are some times where you can go out there and you know you’re doing something right, but you’re not sure if it’s going to work, but that’s not the case with us. We really believe in what we’re going to do and we’re going to have success in what we do.”

You can tell. More than anything else in this Flyers-Penguins series so far, that team-wide defensive belief is the most obvious.

Flyers defenseman Kimmo Timonen is likely to miss the remainder of the playoffs after he was found to have a blood clot in his left ankle yesterday. It is devastating news for the Flyers as they open their series with the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight.

Ronald Fairman, chief of vascular surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, made the diagnosis.

“I got hit with a shot [from Andrei Markov] in Game 4 against Montreal,” the 33-year-old defenseman said. “It’s been getting sorer and sorer every day. We thought we’d get it checked out because it did not get better and they found a blood clot. . . . This has been an awful day for me.

“It’s the most disappointing thing in my hockey life, for sure. . . . It’s an awful feeling. I was expecting to play. How many times in your lifetime do you get to play in a conference final?”

An MRI exam on Wednesday failed to reveal a problem, general manager Paul Holmgren said, but Fairman found a small blood clot yesterday. Timonen was placed on blood thinners.

“I asked the doctor what could happen and what was the worst-case scenario,” Timonen said. “He said, ‘If you get hit there again, the blood clot might break up and go down to your toes and we’d have to cut off your toes.’ That’s not a very good scenario.”

Timonen said he suffered a similar injury to the same ankle five years ago while playing for Nashville and developed a clot as well.

The Flyers initially treated the injury as a bone bruise, icing the ankle. They called for an MRI test when the defenseman’s pain persisted.

“It continued to bother him more and more each day,” Holmgren said. “To rule out a fracture, we checked it out. It’s a quite serious thing. He needs to go on blood thinners. He’s not going to be available.”

Holmgren said there was a small chance that in a week’s time there would be improvement, but he was not holding out much hope that Timonen would play in this series.

Timonen initially told The Inquirer he was out for the remainder of the playoffs. However, during a conference call with reporters, the Finnish defenseman said Fairman told him the only hope to return was if things went well over the next 10 days and the clot disappeared.

“Kimmo did get some glimmer of hope. Who knows?” Holmgren said. “They don’t know. The clot could respond to the medicine he is taking. It’s right where he ties up his skates, and it would be difficult [to play]. I’m not going to hold out any hope he’s back in this series. We’ll see after that.”

Timonen is the club’s best two-way defenseman. He was expected to play against Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin. His loss greatly affects the Flyers’ chances to win the conference finals.

He was the shutdown defenseman against Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin in the first round and Montreal’s Saku Koivu in the second. His 34 blocked shots in the postseason were second on the team to Jason Smith (37).

The composure Timonen brings to the ice, both carrying the puck and defending against the top offensive players in the league, cannot be replaced. Outside of goalie Marty Biron, he is the Flyers’ best defensive weapon.

“It is what it is. We have to deal with it,” Holmgren said. “It gives someone else an opportunity to step up. Everybody else has to do their part. Obviously, you can’t replace a player who does what Kimmo does for us.”

Veteran Jaroslav Modry will likely fill Timonen’s spot, coach John Stevens said. Modry has far more experience than rookie Ryan Parent.

“I played in Game 5 in Montreal, but it was really hurting me,” Timonen said. “I have to be honest, I didn’t expect this result.”

Timonen did not make the trip to Pittsburgh.

DURING THE LAST game of the Flyers’ regular season, Simon Gagne was standing in the Wachovia Center press box listening to some of the talk about the way the Pittsburgh Penguins were playing.

There was a healthy dose of suspicion that Pittsburgh didn’t want to beat the Flyers. A win would have given the Penguins the Eastern Conference title and landed the Flyers in the eighth spot. That would have meant a first-round matchup between the Flyers and Penguins. Sidney Crosby was a healthy scratch and the Penguins just weren’t going after the Flyers the way they had just a few nights before, when they won in Mellon Arena.

The suspicion was that the Penguins wanted to face the fading and struggling Ottawa Senators and have an easier time in the opening round rather than play a more physical series with the Flyers.

“I don’t know about that,” Gagne said, reacting to the suggestion. “You don’t want to try and pick your opponent. It can come back and bite you.”

Now, with the Eastern Conference final set, you have to wonder if the Penguins really were trying to avoid the Flyers and whether it will come back to bite them. While the Flyers are the underdog in the series, the Penguins have to realize that they are nothing like the team they played in the regular season. That Flyers team had a tendency to play for just portions of a game; this one brings it for 60 minutes.

Look at the Flyers’ series-clinching Game 5 victory Saturday night in the conference quarterfinals at Montreal. The Flyers trailed, 3-1, but rallied to take the lead and then won it, 6-4, after Montreal tied it again. There wasn’t ever a hint of quit or an emotional letdown anywhere on the bench.

Before the playoffs began, defenseman Derian Hatcher still was trying to recover from a broken tibia and wasn’t available. Martin Biron was still a goalie with a playoff question mark over his head, and there were questions about the Flyers’ slower defense keeping pace with Washington’s talented forwards, especially Alex Ovechkin.

Well, Hatcher is back and playing well, Biron is the story of the playoffs so far, the fabled “hot goalie,” and the defense has handled the Capitals’ stars and the waves of speedy and talented Canadiens up front.

So now the Penguins, who eliminated the Rangers in overtime yesterday, are facing a ramped-up, confident, healthy Flyers team that loves to play physical - especially against the Penguins. This is a far more dangerous version of the 2007-08 Flyers than at any time during the regular season, and this could be biteback time.

That is, of course, if you believe the Penguins were trying to lose that last game.

For John Stevens, none of it matters.

“To be honest, we just kind of moved on,” the Flyers coach said. “We were excited to be in the playoffs. Ottawa was obviously banged up. [Pittsburgh] got out of that series quickly and I actually thought the Ranger series would go longer. So Pittsburgh is obviously playing well.

“They’ve made good work of the situation that they’re in and now we’re both in the conference final. It doesn’t really matter how we got here. We’re both here and to me there is not much more motivation needed this time of year. Just being here is enough motivation.

“We’re excited with the opportunity,” Stevens added. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing; the fact that you’re playing is the main thing. It makes for a great series and it’s one we’re excited to be a part of.”

Not buying it 

Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren doesn’t believe the theory that the Penguins laid down in the last regular-season game.

“I don’t think that happened,” he said. “I thought Biron made a lot of good saves in that game. I just don’t think that was the case. They didn’t have Crosby, but you don’t know what was going on there. He had a high ankle sprain [earlier in the season that limited him to 53 games].”

Speaking of Gagne 

The Flyers star forward, who called it a season weeks before it was time because of his head injury, has been around the Flyers and traveling with them. He was with the team in Montreal on Saturday night.

But according to Holmgren, there is no chance Gagne will return to play in the postseason.

“He hasn’t done anything in terms of fitness,” Holmgren said yesterday. “I don’t see him being an option no matter how long this thing goes. He’s around and he went to Montreal and it’s probably eating at him, but it’s in his best interest for him to wait.

“I feel bad for him because when you’re an injured player you don’t feel part of the team. I’ve been through it myself and it isn’t easy.”

Big club-little club 

Now that it’s official that the Flyers will play the Penguins in the conference final starting this week, it marks the first time since 2002 that both the NHL and AHL teams from the same two franchises have met for a playoff series at the same time.

The Phantoms, the Flyers’ AHL affiliate, are tied, 1-1, with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, Pittsburgh’s affiliate, in the AHL quarterfinals.

The Flyers-Penguins series will start in Pittsburgh. The Phantoms and Baby Pens will meet in the Wachovia Center tonight and Wednesday for Games 3 and 4.

In 2002, the Toronto Maple Leafs played the New York Islanders while their AHL teams, St. John’s and Bridgeport, also played. *