"Reversal of fortune"

Well the Flyers advanced to the 2nd round on Saturday and I am glad to say I was wrong. I base my prediction base solely on the Flyers of the last two weeks of the regular season. Esche played pretty lousy the last two weeks.

Anyway what happened was almost a reversal of fortunes and this time it was the Devil's goalie letting up goals from really far away at the worse possible time. For second I thought perhaps somehow Check-O was in net for the Devils.

The Devils only successful game was when their powerplay was actually working well. Just like when the Flyers used to get smothered by the Flyers in previous years the powerplay was totally powerless. It was so much nicer to be on the other end of the stick for this one.

Game 4 the Devils through everything but the kitchen sink at Esche and what transpired might have been the single most amazing performance in a single period by a Flyers goalie that I have ever seen. Esche stood on every single body part he has in order to stop the puck from going in. He single handily won the game and prevented a potential tide shift in favor of the Devils. It wasn't as if the shots were just weak ones either the Devils had amazing puck movement resulting one timers, wrap arounds, crashing the net and even a few straight on one on one shots.

The Flyers after years of trying got the demonic monkey off their backs in South Philly Saturday and gave the Devils an early summer.

All and all a very great series. It just feels different then other first round advances. It sucked to lose Lappy and Rico but their replacements are doing just find. With the Blackhawk down line playing the way they are combined with they way Esche played I doubt any teams want to play the Flyers in the 2nd round.