PHILADELPHIA — The building shook, as if trying to contain a great storm.
It was a den of chaos. A pack, 18,000-strong, clad in bright orange, screaming at the top of their lungs, unleashing all they’d kept pent up in the half-decade since playoff hockey last came to this Philadelphia Flyers barn.
Before their squad took the ice Wednesday, Flyers fans lined the glass, pressed their faces and hands up against it. A customary ‘Crosby sucks!’ was belted out by a fan who sounded no older than 12, loud enough for it to filter up to the press box. The crude chant would soon be taken up by the rest of the crowd, bellowed in unison and rained down on the ice as the visitors made themselves known. As hostile an environment as could be found for a Pittsburgh Penguins squad whose backs were already against the ropes.
Still, for 20 minutes, it seemed like Sidney Crosby’s club might be able to navigate this maelstrom, might make it out of here with their post-season hopes intact. For 20 minutes, they were the Penguins of old, or of this past regular season, at least. Evgeni Malkin was tucking home a power-play goal from one knee. His club was volleying pucks at Dan Vladar with abandon, from all angles, making the Flyers netminder work, making the team in front of him defend their house. The Penguins were composed, dangerous. They looked like they were wrestling this one back from the brink.
Then the chaos came for them, enveloped them. One messy, sprawling, series-tilting brawl, and it all collapsed.
It started with a Travis Konecny shot four-and-a-half minutes into the second period. The Flyers veteran got tangled up with Bryan Rust to the right of the Penguins’ cage. Konecny threw an elbow, Rust wrestled him to the ground. For a moment, the Flyers winger’s helmet was launched into the air, and seemed to hang there, spinning. By the time it landed back on the ice, it was pandemonium.
Rust lunged again at Konecny, shoving his head into the back of the net. Sam Girard and Cam York tangled behind them. Travis Sanheim went after Erik Karlsson. Ryan Shea and Christian Dvorak tumbled to the ground. Matvei Michkov and Connor Dewar thrashed around, too.
All eyes in the building were stuck on the two original combatants, Rust and Konecny still trading shots around the body of a referee trying unsuccessfully to calm them. They finally got back up. Konecny wheeled around the Penguins winger and dropped his gloves. Rust was already being escorted to the box, deflated. The jumbotron cut to Konecny screaming at him for not engaging while he was vertical. The fans were furious, and thrilled, and on their feet.
It took a full 10 minutes for the officials to sort out the mess. By the time play restarted, each penalty box was fully stocked — five Flyers on one side, five Penguins on the other.
“It kind of turned into a bit of a circus there,” Crosby said after a Game 3 that ended up getting away from him. “I’m not sure why they decided to put five guys in the box on each side. I felt like that changed all the momentum.”
“They just decided to take everybody who was on the ice, which I’ve never seen in my 17 years here,” said Karlsson, one of the five locked up after the melee. “It’s unfortunate. It benefitted them more than it benefitted us.”
When the smoke cleared, the Flyers emerged with a power play, Rust given an extra two minutes while all the other offenders had their infractions cancel out. Forty seconds into that man-advantage, Jamie Drysdale floated a pass from the point to a waiting Trevor Zegras, posted up on the half-wall. He loaded up, time standing still as the puck drifted into his wheelhouse, and then the former Anaheim Duck uncorked an exclamation-point one-timer past Stuart Skinner and into the back of the cage.
The building exploded. Zegras beelined to the penalty box, banging on the glass as the five Flyers inside jumped in an absurd joyful huddle. It was clear something had shifted, something had turned. And the Flyers kept coming.
Four minutes later, Noah Juulsen corralled the puck near the left circle and wired a cross-ice pass to a wide-open Rasmus Ristolainen. He took a step, waited, and whipped the puck through Skinner’s five-hole.
Two minutes after that, Juulsen was at it again, collecting the puck at the point, faking a shot, and finding Nick Seeler — the veteran threw one in from distance, and saw it sail past Skinner, too.
Three goals in six minutes, and it was over. Pittsburgh managed to get one back in the third, but Philadelphia answered, and added an empty-netter for good measure, winning 5-2 when all was said and done. With it, the underdog Flyers have managed to take a 3-0 chokehold on this first-round series.
“We believe in our group,” captain Sean Couturier said from the bowels of Xfinity Mobile Arena after the final buzzer had sounded. “We’ve believed in our group all year long. You know, a lot of people counted us out all year, and we stuck to the way we want to play. It’s just the belief in that room. We play for one another.”
His head coach couldn’t help but marvel at the bond this group has formed over the course of the campaign, at the way it came to the fore on this particular night.
“I’ve been in the game 40 years. I’m not just saying it — this is one of the tightest groups [he’s seen], even as a coach, as a player,” Rick Tocchet said. The Flyers bench boss, who played for the organization for 11 years back in the day as well, heaped praise on the Philly faithful after a raucous night in the building, too.
“For me, I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it,” Tocchet said. “It’s seeing the young guys, and [Couturier], [Konecny], see that crowd. It’s been a while. So I’m really happy for those guys.”
Down the hallway, a stunned silence hung in the visitors’ locker room after Game 3 had wound to a close. But unlike the first two tilts in this series, there was no confusion this time about when and why the game had slipped away from them.
“When they put all the players in the box,” head coach Dan Muse said simply, when asked where it all went sideways for his team. “There’s a scrum there, we get the extra penalty — where? That changed everything. And it took a long time to get it all sorted out. Listen, I’m not going to be here making excuses — there’s plenty that we can do better. But that definitely factored into the feel of that period, and the game.”
The club was also irked by an early call that saw Garnet Hathaway’s stick connect with Crosby’s face as the teams waited to take a draw — the officials sent Hathaway to the box for high-sticking, and sent Crosby to the box for embellishment too, after the captain dropped to the ice.
“We don’t have a single embellishment all year,” Muse said of the decision. “Sidney Crosby doesn’t have an embellishment in 21 seasons. Stick’s in his face. They take both of them. I disagree on that, strongly. Not one — not one for our team. All season. So, we didn’t come into this series to start now. Our guys have done a good job with that. And Sid doesn’t embellish.”
“I don’t know how Rusty ends up with the extra (penalty) out of all that, I don’t know how I end up with embellishment,” Crosby said from his stall in the visitors’ room, shaking his head. “It’s hard to understand. But you’ve got to play through that.”
Through three games in this series, the Penguins have struggled to play through the Flyers’ physicality. All three games have seen the Broad Street squad pull their state rivals into the muck, drag them into the mud, and wrestle out a win from there. It hasn’t happened by accident.
“Listen, we talked about it,” Tocchet said of his club’s physicality in this series. “We talked about playing through people, boxing out, things like that, that are kind of our staples.”
“It’s just part of it. It’s a battle out there,” added Konecny. “You’re fighting for ice, you’re trying to own the blue paint. Things are just going to happen.”
To this point, it’s been a battle dominated by one club. Though the Penguins have shown glimpses of their game, put together sequences here and there of the offensive dominance they showcased during the regular season, by and large their offence has run dry. No more so than on the power play — the Pens have earned a league-leading 12 man-advantage opportunities through three games, giving them plenty of chances to punish the Flyers’ agitating approach. Pittsburgh’s managed just two goals in that span, both scored Wednesday.
Now, they await an all-or-nothing Game 4 on Saturday. Win and stay in, or lose and it’s over.
“I mean, there’s not much room for error when you’re in this position, that’s the reality,” Crosby said of his club’s situation. “The fact is, we’ve got to win a game. That’s going to be our focus. We can’t grab three on Saturday. We’ve got to win one.”
“It hurts,” said Karlsson. “We’ve dug ourselves a hole that for some can seem impossible, but at the end of the day, it’s a great opportunity. And we have to find a way to move forward. By now, we should know what to expect. We’ve done things for three games in a row that haven’t benefitted us.
“Now, it’s do or die. Now, we’re going to see what we’re made of.”