PITTSBURGH — They share the same state, but no affection for each other. Their coaches are bitter rivals going back to the days when each led the AHL farm team of the big club.
And they weren't even built the same way, although the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins arrived at the same place this season when everything fell into place – the NHL's Eastern Conference final, also known as the Battle of Pennsylvania, which begins tonight at the Mellon Arena.
The Penguins, whom everyone likes to compare to the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty of the 1980s because they are an offensive-minded team with a couple of young superstars, were built mostly through the entry draft, just like the Oilers. The Flyers, on the other hand, started with a couple of young hotshots from the draft, but were mainly put together by a series of smart trades by general manager Paul Holmgren.
Both teams spent time among the NHL's dregs in recent years, hence the Penguins' long list of top-five picks in the entry draft that allowed them to grab Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Marc-André Fleury and Ray Whitney. And both teams surprised the hockey cognoscenti with their burst of success this season.
But it is the Flyers who were not expected to be here. Everyone knew the Penguins would be a great team at some point. The Flyers, on the other hand, were not expected to bounce nearly as high after hitting bottom in the 2006-07 season, in which head coach Ken Hitchcock was fired and general manager Bobby Clarke resigned.
However, even people in the Penguins' camp thought the Flyers were better than they looked. When Holmgren went to work on his fellow GMs before the trade deadline in 2007 and again that summer, he had a good base of talent to start with in young forwards Mike Richards and Jeff Carter and veterans such as wingers Simon Gagné, Mike Knuble and R.J. Umberger.
“I don't think they were that bad last year,” Penguins forward Jarkko Ruutu said yesterday. “I just think that things started going against them. There were a lot of things going on there. The coach got fired, there was a new GM.”
Holmgren started his trading campaign in February of 2007 when he sent declining veteran defenceman Alexei Zhitnik to the Atlanta Thrashers for 23-year-old defenceman Braydon Coburn. The Calgary native is now one of the Flyers' top four defencemen and will play an even bigger role since Timmo Kimonen was lost for the rest of the playoffs because of a blood clot in an ankle.
Then he added a big piece of the puzzle, goaltender Martin Biron, in a trade with the Buffalo Sabres.
Another fading veteran, centre Peter Forsberg, was sent to the Nashville Predators for more young players – forward Scottie Upshall and defenceman Ryan Parent and first-round and third-round draft picks. In June of 2007, that first-round pick was sent back to Nashville for pending free agents Timmonen and Scott Hartnell, who were both signed.
Those trades, and the selling job of his buddy and former teammate Biron, attracted the attention of Daniel Brière. Soon, Holmgren had one of the top free agents in the 2007 crop.
“I know last year was an off-year for a lot of guys on the team,” Brière said. “But you can't just look at the record. You've got to look at the players. Some of the young guys that I had a chance to play against in the past couple of years really impressed me. Obviously, I liked what Paul Holmgren was doing with the team.”
So did Holmgren's counterpart with the Penguins, Ray Shero. He, too, thought there was some substance there in 2007 when Holmgren went shopping.
“[The Flyers] turned it around in one year,” Shero said. “It's hard to do that unless you've got Carter, Richards, young guys like that, in place. Then you can trade for what you need.
“You've got those good young players and it's the foundation of your franchise. The trading and everything else falls on top of that.”
Shero, by the way, has a Philadelphia connection. His late father, Fred, was the head coach of the Flyers' last Stanley Cup champions, in 1974 and 1975.
The Penguins' general manager made his own splashy trade to supplement his young talent. At the trade deadline this year, he landed the top prize, winger Marian Hossa, for a barrel of prospects and draft picks.
Shero's payoff came in the final game of the Eastern Conference semi-final when Hossa scored the game and series winner against the New York Rangers in overtime.
