Flyers win 4th straight to oust Bruins
BOSTON - Down 3-0 in the series, then down 3-0 in Game 7 on the road. It looked as if the Philadelphia Flyers finally had run out of rallies against the Boston Bruins. Turns out Simon Gagne and his teammates were just warming up. Taking advantage of a too-many-men-on-the-ice call, Gagne scored on a power play with 7:08 left for a 4-3 victory Friday night as the Flyers won the Eastern Conference semifinal series in historic fashion.
The only other teams to win a series after trailing 3-0 were the 1942 Maple Leafs, who beat the Red Wings, and the 1975 Islanders, who beat the Penguins. The other 159 teams that won the first three games in a series advanced. "We got a little carried away from our game plan and lost our composure," Bruins captain Zdeno Chara said.
"All the adversity we had fought through . . . it's absolutely incredible," Philadelphia's Scott Hartnell said.
The win set up a most unlikely matchup for a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals - the seventh-seeded Flyers against the eighth-seeded Montreal Canadiens.
The Flyers capitalized when captain Mike Richards' shot from the right circle hit players in front of Tuukka Rask. The puck bounced and Gagne, stationed to Rask's left, flipped the puck over the goalie's right shoulder. Gagne, a major force since returning from a toe injury for Game 4, scored with 18 seconds left in the power play.
"I saw two centermen out there and I said, 'What's going on?' '' said Milan Lucic, who had two goals for Boston. "I knew there was a miscommunication out there and we got caught."
The Bruins took a 3-0 lead in the first 14:10 on power-play goals by Michael Ryder and Lucic and another goal by Lucic. Then James van Riemsdyk scored with 2:48 left in the first period for the Flyers. Second-period goals by Hartnell at 2:49 and Danny Briere at 8:39 tied it at 3.
While the Flyers celebrated, the yellow towels that fans twirled to spur on their team floated to the ice, no longer needed until next season. Boston center Patrice Bergeron took a slap shot with one of them. Like the Bruins, it didn't go very far.
