Lauren Hart

I LISTENED to the singing of "O Canada" at the Senators-Flyers hockey game on April 29 - and I just want to say thank you. Lauren Hart's singing of our national anthem was beautiful. I am but one Canadian among many who stands beside the United States and not behind you. Again, thank you. Al Jones, Ottawa Better Phillies posters, please I just want to say that the photos in the ads for your Phillies posters are better than the actual posters themselves. I have always collected these in the past because they were nice, glossy and colorful.

AT NEARLY every home game for at least a decade, Lauren Hart has given the Flyers and their fans exactly what her father, legendary sportscaster Gene Hart, gave them for nearly 30 years - her voice. But tonight, Hart, who will sing the national anthem for the first time at a Stanley Cup Finals game, is also looking forward to being just one voice in a swelling sea of many. "I can't imagine what it will feel like in that building," she said. "I know our fans and we won't do anything less than blow the roof off that stadium.

Lauren Hart was only 11 when the first Flyers' Wives Fight for Lives Carnival was held. The way she remembers it, the carnival was everything it was supposed to be for a young girl. "It was toys and clowns and balloons," said Hart, now 34. Yesterday was something much different for Hart, the daughter of late Flyers play-by-play announcer Gene Hart. Since being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma early last month, everything about the fight to find a cure for cancer has become very real for her. "This is something much different for me now," Hart said yesterday as she sat outside the Flyers' dressing room at the First Union Center greeting friends and well-wishers.

Snowed in during a winter storm, singer Lauren Hart looked out into a quiet, beautiful night in 2000, and started to write a song on guitar. "It's a good time to write," Hart said. "Everything is still. The snow makes everything renewed . . . fresh and new. " On that wintry night, struggling with the loss of her father, Gene - the beloved voice of the Philadelphia Flyers - and a diagnosis of cancer, Hart found inner strength with that song, "Girl Keeps On. " Hart decided, "I'm not giving in to my insecurities.

In the best show-business tradition, Lauren Hart plans to sing the national anthem Saturday night when the Flyers host the New Jersey Devils at the First Union Center. As she walks down the carpeted runner that takes her onto the ice, Hart said she won't be thinking about the crowd's reaction to her disclosure yesterday that she is suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes. "Mostly, I always just think about my singing," said Hart, 34, daughter of Flyers announcer Gene Hart, who passed away last July 14 at age 68. "Sometimes when I walk off the stage or walk off the ice, I don't even know what I just did. . .I just hope people will be understanding, that they know how much I want to be there and be part of the team, for my dad, for the Flyers, and for my whole family history of being involved with the Flyers.

Lauren Hart, whose silvery voice fills First Union Center at every Flyers game with the national anthem, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes. The Flyers and Hart, 34, made the announcement yesterday, one month and two days after head coach Roger Neilson divulged that he has multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer. Hart's father, Gene, the longtime voice of the Flyers, died over the summer from liver cancer and kidney failure. Hart's physician, Rosemary Kearney of Pennsylvania Hospital, said there is no familial, genetic link to her father's disease and that non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is curable.

LAUREN HART, daughter of legendary Flyers announcer Gene Hart, has been singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "O Canada" regularly at Flyers games since 1998. She also has been called on during monumental games to perform a duet of "God Bless America" along with a taped version of Kate Smith. Hart won't be on the ice tonight. She will be at soldout Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies have invited her to sing "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch of Game 1 of the NLDS against the Reds.

I CAME across six of the rudest group of teenage girls while walking on Ridge Avenue near Roxborough High School on a recent evening. They all were students from that school and were loitering around the area shortly after 6 p.m. The group of witches were using vulgar language directed toward me as I passed by. It seems that whenever nice weather arrives, nasty creeps like these girls have nothing better to do than to taunt regular working-class...

SIGHTS, sounds and observations from the Flyers-Devils series: *It was interesting to watch Danny Briere give out pointers to Zac Rinaldo during the morning practice on Tuesday. It was as if Briere was saying, "when Volchenkov gets along the half boards, you smear him. " *Briere, who is just about always accessible before and after games, was too distraught to speak after Game 5 and asked if he could skip the postgame media availability. *It's time to retire Kate Smith from the pregame National Anthem ceremonies.

THE HOCKEY GODS are smiling down on the Flyers. First, the Orange and Black came back from a 3-0 deficit to shock the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Now comes news that the U.S. Postal Service is issuing a Kate Smith postage stamp. Flyers chairman Ed Snider and members of the Flyers' Stanley Cup championship teams will join Philadelphia postmaster Joseph P. Kinney for the ceremony at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Kate Smith statue at the Wachovia Spectrum. Lauren Hart will perform at the free event, which is open to the public.

Two days before the NHL's deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement, representatives from the league and the players union were not at the bargaining table Tuesday. If you're scoring at home, the sides have not met for five straight days. The NHL says it needs a new collective bargaining agreement in place by Thursday in order to start one-week training camps Friday and begin an 82-game season Nov. 2. That is now an extremely long shot. Bill Daly, the NHL's deputy commissioner, said in an e-mail to The Inquirer that the league has "never ruled out the possibility of using a mediator" to jump-start negotiations.

To get an idea of whether "The Star-Spangled Banner" is universally sung — or for that matter, known — just log on to YouTube. Boston Red Sox fans keep quiet until the national anthem's end, when they cheer. A group of youngsters at a Phillies game are asked if they know the words, and only a few raise their hands. Various checks of U.S. Olympic athlete footage show mostly lip-synching. We all know Christina Aguilera doesn't know her national anthem, at least when she lost her lyrics in game 6 of the 2010 NBA playoffs.

SIGHTS, sounds and observations from the Flyers-Devils series: *It was interesting to watch Danny Briere give out pointers to Zac Rinaldo during the morning practice on Tuesday. It was as if Briere was saying, "when Volchenkov gets along the half boards, you smear him. " *Briere, who is just about always accessible before and after games, was too distraught to speak after Game 5 and asked if he could skip the postgame media availability. *It's time to retire Kate Smith from the pregame National Anthem ceremonies.

ABOUT 10 SECONDS before the puck dropped on Sunday afternoon, shortly after "my home sweet home" simultaneously slipped from the mouths of Kate Smith and Lauren Hart, Claude Giroux circled by Danny Briere at the Flyers' bench. "He came over to me and said, 'Watch the first shift,' " Briere said. In one 32-second burst, Giroux quelled the fears of a quiet, on-edge, capacity crowd at the Wells Fargo Center with a first shift out of a scene in the cult-classic flick "Slap Shot.

Three games. Three wins. The Pittsburgh Penguins' holy trinity - Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang - is on life support, and the brooms will be out Wednesday as the Flyers will have the opportunity to complete their first NHL playoff series sweep since 1995. And it's all thanks to the Flyers' electrifying 8-4 win over the Penguins on "bloody" Sunday at the Wells Fargo Center. If you had told the Flyers beforehand that they would lead this best-of-seven series three games to none, "we probably would have laughed at you," said Flyers center Claude Giroux.

LAST TUESDAY, when Peter Laviolette's eyes finally hurt too much from hours of video to stay open any longer, he climbed into the bed in his Pittsburgh hotel room and turned off the light. That night - and every successive night - the final thought was probably not about the glory of the Stanley Cup or nuance of a particular play. Like a worried parent, the lasting image is usually the worst-case scenario. The brooding, bloody knuckles and broken bones were a given. But through all of Laviolette's game-planning and preparation, never once was the possibility of sweeping the juggernaut Pittsburgh Penguins even a thought.

Flyers Notes TAMPA, Fla. - Center Brayden Schenn returned to the lineup for the first time in three-plus weeks when the Flyers played Tampa Bay on Tuesday night. Schenn, 20, had missed the previous nine games after suffering what the Flyers called a "mild" concussion in Phoenix on Dec. 3. "You just want to get the first shift, the first period, and the first game out of the way, then you can stop thinking about it and keep going on with the season," Schenn said before the game.

COMIC ACTOR CHRIS TUCKER has begun work on "The Silver Linings Playbook," which has been shooting in town for a few weeks. On Monday, the "Rush Hour" and "Friday" star played a mental patient in a group-therapy scene that also featured Rydal-raised Bradley Cooper and was shot at Norristown State Hospital.   Ink-free mayor Mayor Nutter says he neither has, nor wants, a tattoo. We didn't think so but decided to ask whether Hizzoner had any ink after realizing that both his mayoral-election opponents have tattoos.

With Michael Vick suffering a concussion in last Sunday's game, the Impact test has been the week's biggest sports discussion. According to most neurologists, the test, which measures a person's cognitive faculties and mental and memory skills, is an accurate predictor on whether the athlete's brain has sufficiently recovered from the concussion, making him OK to get banged around again in a pro football game. Vick likely will be a go against the New York Giants. There is another test of which we are familiar.

They were equally deafening, the roar of the fervent fans as this game began and the silence that fell when it suddenly ended. It was a moment chillingly similar to the end of the Flyers' Stanley Cup dream last year, an overtime goal that no one seemed sure about. This time it was David Krejci of the Boston Bruins whose shot bounced off the back of the net so quickly, the referee never saw it. This time, play continued until the next stoppage, and a video review confirmed the worst for the Flyers: Krejci scored, and the Flyers' must-win game was a loss.