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PITTSBURGH — When the NHL playoffs started, the Pittsburgh Penguins liked to tell people they could play any way their opponents wanted.
Then they proceeded to back it up. The first round didn't count, since the Ottawa Senators lay down and died for them, but the New York Rangers found out the Penguins could win in a shootout or a checking game.
But coming into the Eastern Conference final, there was one game the Penguins had not played: a physical, hard-hitting battle along the boards and in front of the net. The Philadelphia Flyers, even if missing top defenceman Kimmo Timonen, brought one of those games last night.
Guess what? The Penguins beat them at that, too.
In a breathtaking display by both teams, a mix of big hits and great skill, the Penguins bent at first, but did not break and struck back to take the opening game of the best-of-seven series with a 4-2 win.
The Flyers' goal on offence was to create a lot of traffic in front of Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-André Fleury. They did that in the first period, as Fleury saw more bodies in front of his net than he did in all of the first two rounds.
This produced a brief lead for the Flyers, as Mike Richards scored twice in 4 minutes 20 seconds from close range. But they could not sustain the pressure and the Penguins' defence started pushing back.
"The competitive level we should have had around our net was not there," Penguins head coach Michel Therrien said. "We knew what [the Flyers] were going to do.
"But after not playing for a week, the competitive level was not quite there early in the game. We addressed that with the players and we were much better around our net."
Evgeni Malkin and Marian Hossa, not normally thought of as bangers, dished out some bodychecks. Of the Penguins' 17 hits in the first period, Hossa had three, and Malkin made one of the best hits of the night when he flattened Flyers defenceman Braydon Coburn in the second period.
"We weren't surprised by it," Flyers forward Scott Hartnell said. "Malkin played us tough all season long. He likes to get in there with the rough stuff. It seems like he thrives on that. We have to eliminate his time and space."
Even when they made the best hits, the Flyers' physical game came back to bite them.
In a marvellous sequence of hockey early in the second period, Malkin scored a short-handed goal when a big check by Richards backfired. Richards drilled Malkin into the end boards by the Flyers' net, and the Penguins' star got up slowly as the play moved down to the other end of the ice.
Richards got in another great bodycheck, levelling a Penguin in the high slot, but the puck was quickly turned back toward Malkin, who was in perfect position to take a breakaway pass. He skated to within 10 feet of Flyers goaltender Martin Biron and blasted a slap shot past him to put the Penguins ahead 4-2.
"He's fearless," Therrien said of Malkin. "Our good players, they played hard. They're not going to back down."
It was the second goal of the game for Malkin, who quickly snatched the honour of the game's best player back from Richards. Ten minutes later, he knocked Coburn on his backside.
"They gave us some good hits," Therrien said. "We had some pretty good hits, too. One of the best was Malkin on Coburn. It showed the character of the players.
"It gave us confidence. We attacked the second period with the confidence we needed."
If the Flyers are to shake off the loss of Timonen and make this a series, they need to re-establish the physical game. This is no certainty, not with Hossa and Malkin willing to dish out checks. The usual Penguins thumpers, Gary Roberts, Georges Laraque and Jarkko Ruutu, were mixing it up, too.
A return to form by Biron is imperative, too. He was not awful, but he was far from the goaltender who stoned the Montreal Canadiens in the previous round.
The Flyers did try to assert themselves in the final few minutes of the game with the usual scrums, but found the Penguins willing combatants. When Scott Upshall cross-checked a Penguin after a whistle, Malkin was the first to jump to his teammate's defence.
