Fred Shero

At this point, it might take more than Keith Primeau to make the Flyers the team they were a couple of months ago. Primeau, out since suffering a left knee sprain on March 26, practiced yesterday and once again voiced optimism about playing in tonight's Game 3 of the Flyers' first-round playoff series against Buffalo. The Flyers trail the Sabres, 2-0, going into games on back-to-back nights at HSBC Arena. "If you ask me, pretty darn close to 100 percent," Primeau said when asked about his chances of being in the lineup tonight after skating for a fifth successive day. "We have to win this game," coach Bill Barber said yesterday, and Primeau said he did not want to sit and watch a full season of hard work possibly go for nothing.

He hadn't started a game in nearly a month. He hadn't played more than 20 minutes in the last seven days. Given that, no one would have blamed Flyers goalie Brian Boucher if his lanky legs and glove hand had gotten so rusty that he couldn't play a sound game last night against the Chicago Blackhawks. Just the opposite was the case. Boucher played his strongest game in more than three months. He was brilliant much of the way at the United Center as the Flyers won their third consecutive game, 5-1. "Brian played absolutely stellar for us," coach Bill Barber said.

Flyers would have been on thin ice without Bobby Fans forget how significant general manager Bobby Clarke has been in transforming Philadelphia into one of North America's most respected hockey bastions. Attending Game One of the opening playoff round, I was thrilled to see Clarke in the upper deck, and to have my son see a living legend. What a shock then, when the Flyers were losing, to have a fan yell, "Hey, Clarke, I want my money back!" The Flyers were a lackluster expansion team until they "took a chance" on Clarke, a diabetic overlooked by all the other National Hockey League teams.

The Eagles' 13-12 victory over Dallas had Philadelphia fans floating down Broad Street. However, Fox analysts John Madden and Howie Long believe it is too early to bury the 'Boys. Madden said yesterday it's "premature" to rule out the 4-4 Cowboys making the playoffs. Madden and longtime partner Pat Summerall will be calling the Dallas-San Francisco game on Sunday (Channel 29, 4 p.m.) "If they were in a division where someone else was in position to take it over, you could say that they're starting to slip," Madden said.

The chant, like a distant roll of thunder, started in the upper reaches of the CoreStates Spectrum. "An-i-mal. An-i-mal. " Soon it swept through the arena, down to the lower sections, where it became more pointed. "We want Frank. We want Frank. " The subject of the fans' adoration was one Frank "The Animal" Bialowas, a long-haired, bearded, punch-throwing hockey player for the first-year Phantoms of the American Hockey League. With their team safely in the lead the other night against the Kentucky Thoroughblades, the crowd wanted The Animal.

Upstairs in the lounge area at Twin Rinks in Pennsauken, Tampa Bay general manager Phil Esposito was playing table hockey, laughing at his successes, cursing his failures. Down at ice level, Lightning coach Terry Crisp was telling war stories about his playing days 20 years ago with the Flyers' back-to-back Stanley Cup championship teams, and saying how it was good to spend a few days with old friends from the Philadelphia area. He was imitating the way Fred Shero, the enigmatic character who coached those Flyers teams, used to push his rose-colored glasses from the tip of his nose.

Terry Murray is running another Flyers practice. It is kind of hard to tell. Murray hardly blows his whistle. And when he does, he barely makes the little pea inside it move. He often points a player to a spot on the ice by using the tip of his stick. He rarely shouts, other than to say, "Here we go!" or "Let's go, guys!" He mostly looks at his stopwatch when his team does windsprints. You would think that Murray would be mighty tempted to whip the Flyers into a mad-dog froth now that they need only four more victories to reach the Stanley Cup finals.

Pay the kid next door to cut that two-acre lawn. Rent a video and stay home instead of fighting for good seats at the movies. Most of all, stay away from those mile-long malls and off the 6,000-yard golf course. That's the advice Flyers coach Terry Murray gave his players yesterday. The Flyers will skate into the NHL playoffs for the first time in six seasons next weekend, and Murray doesn't want his players worn down by anything other than hockey. In fact, the coach said he might sequester the team in a hotel somewhere on the edge of town for the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Mario Lemieux made the goals look unbelievably easy. On his first goal yesterday, he drilled a slap shot from the left circle past Flyers goalie Dominic Roussel just 34 seconds into the third period for a 2-0 Pittsburgh lead. At 6:13 of the period, the Pittsburgh superstar cruised into the Flyers' zone as if he were on a leisurely Sunday skate. From the top of the left circle, Lemieux wristed a shot that beat Roussel low on the glove side and sealed the Flyers' doom. Not bad for someone playing in only his second game since Nov. 7. Lemieux, 28, underwent back surgery last summer.

Terry Crisp doesn't even attempt to keep his emotions under wraps. Never has. Probably never will. It's simply not his style. So when defenseman Gord Hynes scored a huge goal with a minute remaining in the third period to lift the Canadian national team into a 5-5 tie with Team USA in an Olympic Games prep, Crisp marched behind the home team's bench, conking heads together and slapping backs. Crisp couldn't have been more excited if he'd scored the goal himself. It would be hard to find a man happier to be back behind a hockey bench.