"In the long run, everyone will sit back and we should be proud of what we've done," Jeff Carter said. "The adversity that we faced, the coaching changes, we were basically last place in the conference and we battled back. We battled all playoffs, just to get to this point. That feels good, but it definitely hurts right now."
Carter said he still believed the Flyers were going to win Game 6 and erase just one more hole, one more deficit, one more time.
"Definitely," Carter said. "Going into this game, we were still going to win the Stanley Cup. I think everyone in this room believed that."
Along the way, the Flyers captured the imagination and spirit of a city that craved another, if unexpected, championship. Sports fans in Philadelphia that had long forgotten about the sport were suddenly wearing orange and watching hockey in June.
"I'm very proud," Laviolette said. "The way we played, we never quit. We never gave up. They kept fighting."
Despite not skating off the ice hoisting the Cup, the Flyers left a footprint that won't be forgotten in this town - or this sport - for a long time.
"Right now, it's tough to appreciate everything we went through," Danny Briere said. "It's going to take a few days to get over the sting of coming this far and going home empty-handed. I'm proud of my teammates. We made a late surge. I'm going to remember this for a long time."
For more news and analysis, read Frank Seravalli's blog, Frequent Flyers, at http://go.philly.com/frequentflyers.
