Gameday Poop: Game 1 – Penguins vs Flyers – The Bloodbath

Don’t let these Flyers fool you. Flyers GM Paul Holmgren and coach Peter Laviolette have gone about rebuilding the team from the ground up. They started by removing the characters and keeping the players with character. In the off season they added and paid heavily for a player to come in that brought playoff experience.  Not only did he bring experience, he brought a great presence in the locker room and could bring the players together outside the rink also. No, not Jaromir Jagr, I’m talking about Maxime Talbot.

This year with the Flyers Talbot enjoyed his best professional season to date. The building up of friendships outside the rink could end up being Talbot’s undoing though as it will be hard to play his scrappy game against his good friends.

Don’t let last Saturday’s game fool you. The Flyers Scottie Hartnell smiled and said this about tonight’s game. “It’s going to be a bloodbath,”. The Flyers did not play their game on Saturday. If you took time to notice they did not plant one person in front of the net the entire game.  Clearing Hartnell from in front of the net should be priority #1 for the Penguins.

Where the Flyers failed on Saturday was while trying to make the Penguins feel content was that they lost their first game at the Consol. Breaking the “Consol Curse” was huge for many of the older Penguins fans who are all too familiar with the “Spectrum Curse”

What will be the Flyers undoing?  Penalties.  The Flyers took more penalties than any other team during the regular season, almost 200 more than the next closest team.  The Penguins with the two best players in the NHL on the same power play have one of the leagues deadliest power plays.  That’s really all you need to know.

Penalty Shots:

The Penguins & Flyers game tonight is the first game of the NHL Post Season.

Daniel Briere made a miraculous recovery and will be on the ice tonight against the Penguins.

Flyers attributed their winning streak at Consol to Deejays ribs in Weirton. “Those ribs seem to be doing the trick. It went back to last year. Whenever the ribs are ordered, we win. I want to thank DeeJays.” said Flyers coach Laviolette who was probably just trying to do his buddy Dewey, the owner of Deejays, a favor. Laviolette and Dewey became friends when Laviolette used to coach the Wheeling Nailers. After the home of the Pens 105.9 the X called out Deejays, Dewey had this to say: “No more ribs for them, and I pray, I hope, that the Penguins beat their skates off.”   This is great news, thanks Dewey!  As a side note, Dewey may want to work on his hockey lingo.

Evgeni Malkin won the Art Ross Trophy this year by the largest spread in 13 years and he did it playing 7 less games than the next closest player. The last guy to win by that many points was a guy named Jaromir Jagr.

The last time Evgeni Malkin won the Art Ross Trophy the Penguins won the Cup.

The Flyers continue their attempts at feeble mind games.  The Flyers assistant coach said this about Sidney Crosby “This guy gets away with too much in my opinion, whines to the refs all day and all night, it’s a joke”.  The last time we played the Flyers in a playoff series they were all about calling Crosby a diver.  They lost that series & the Penguins won the Cup that year.

You can read more about the Crosby comments this week here: Tortorella, Milbury & Berube Resolve to Calling Crosby & Malkin Names

For tonight’s ticket holders:

The last two games at the Consol a few people wasted their breath trying to start a “Hartnell Sucks” chant. Please don’t waste your breath on that guy, in doing so your putting him up on a platform with Crosby.

I’m not sure how it happened, but NBC has done a 180 and is letting the Penguins show their games on the big screen outside. Someone up top there must have figured out that hockey fans brand awareness is one of the tops in all of sports and that NBC itself is a brand. No matter how it happened, it’s very exciting for the outdoor game watchers.  Now if NBC will just get rid of Milbury!

How about us Pens fans support the white out tonight.  I was very disappointed at the playoff games last year to see many people not wearing the white in support of the team. I realize that your third jersey Chinese knock off is really cool, but you already didn’t support the team by buying that from a guy who knows somebody. How about just putting on the white and supporting your team this time.

Additional reading:

If your not familiar with the history the Penguins have with the Flyers, you can read it here: The History of the Penguins vs Flyers Rivalry in Six Easy Steps

Here are the PenguinPoop’s writers Predictions for the Series:  Pittsburgh Penguins vs Philadelphia Flyers 2012 Playoff Predictions

Additional listening: 

Tomorrow night at 7PM est on PENGUINPOOP RADIO Art Vandelay & Disco Stu will be going toe to toe with  Travis Hughes of Broad Street Hockey.

Game time is 7:30pm est.  The game can be seen in 3D at the Consol Energy Center and in HD on the church parking lot outside the Consol.  It can also be seen in HD on the NBC Sports Network.

* The “Gameday Poop” is provided to give you enough information to sound intelligent while talking about hockey for 10 minutes. Anything after that and your on your own.

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