The Flyers did what they did in the clichéd one-game-at-a-time manner. After falling behind three games to none in a best-of-seven series, they just chipped away, period by period, shift by shift. History weighed heavily against them. Only three teams had ever come back from 0-3 in a seven-game series, in any sport.
Two of them were hockey teams. One – the Boston Red Sox – was a baseball team.
The Phillies were never in a hole that deep. They split the first two games of the NLCS at home. They lost two in San Francisco, which meant they faced elimination in Thursday night's Game 5.
The Flyers faced elimination in all four wins they put together against the Bruins in May. And, because of the NHL's format, they had to win Games 5 and 7 in Boston. The Phillies get to play Games 6 and 7, if they can force it, at home.
That is no small thing. To their credit, the Giants handled it better than most by winning Game 1 at Citizens Bank Park. With an excellent pitching performance from Tim Lincecum and a pair of home runs from Cody Ross, they silenced the crowd unlike any team since the 2007 Colorado Rockies.
By Game 2, order was restored. The Bank was rocking and the Phillies won easily, 6-1. As the pressure mounts, the air in the ballpark is going to get harder and harder for the Giants to breathe. It just is.
These Phillies also have one other enormous advantage the Flyers didn't have. Their sport is all about pitching, and they have two superior starters lined up for Games 6 and 7 this weekend. In the roughly equivalent position in their sport, goaltender, the Flyers had Brian Boucher stepping in for the injured Michael Leighton.
Roy Oswalt, who has been brilliant at home, and Cole Hamels are closer to Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy than to Leighton or Boucher.
