Stanley Cup

Even though they managed a gritty 3-1 win over the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon, the Flyers are having a head-scratching season: a 14-17-3 record that has them near the bottom of the Eastern Conference. Now look at the same juncture last season and swallow hard: a 21-9-4 record for 46 points - 15 more than this year's team. No wonder winger Scott Hartnell said when he met with club chairman Ed Snider the other day, "you could see the hurt in his eyes by obviously the way we're playing.

PITTSBURGH - Sidney Crosby knows the Pittsburgh Penguins will be considered Stanley Cup contenders so long as his familiar No. 87 hangs in the dressing room. "We're always in the conversation as far as favorites," Crosby said. At the moment, a case could be made the Penguins are the only ones in it. Already riding a 13-game winning streak behind the typically sublime Crosby and a suddenly responsible defense, Pittsburgh's quest for the franchise's fourth Cup received a rocket-fueled boost late Wednesday night when general manager Ray Shero acquired six-time All-Star forward Jarome Iginla from Calgary.

BOSTON - The Flyers are in crisis mode. They have lost three straight, haven't scored in the five periods since taking an early 4-1 lead before collapsing against Pittsburgh on Thursday, and are in danger of missing the playoffs for just the second time in the last 18 seasons. After a listless 3-0 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday, coach Peter Laviolette, whose job isn't as safe as it looked a month ago, held a closed-door meeting with his players that lasted 20 minutes. Twenty minutes to coax the Flyers into playing 60 minutes each game.

This time last year, when the NHL laid out its original proposal for divisional realignment, the Flyers and Penguins were skating in separate "conferences. " After last spring's epic playoff series - and wild first two games this season - is there any chance the NHL would ever let that happen again? "Especially after the playoffs, I don't think they'll want to take that away again," Danny Briere said with a smile. "It's so complicated. You're trying to please as many teams as possible.

Patrick Kane and Andrew Shaw scored in a shootout, and the host Chicago Blackhawks beat the Vancouver Canucks, 4-3, on Tuesday night to match the NHL record for season-opening point streak. The Blackhawks (13-0-3) earned their third consecutive win to join the 2006-07 Anaheim Ducks as the only teams to record at least one point in the first 16 games of a season. The Ducks got off to a 12-0-4 start that year and won the Stanley Cup. Chicago will go for the record Friday night when it hosts the San Jose Sharks for the second time in a week.

THE EVIDENCE seems overwhelming. Darryl Sutter replaced Terry Murray halfway through a dismal campaign in Los Angeles last year and poof, a few months later, the Kings won their first-ever Stanley Cup. Fired after a disappointing three seasons in Florida, Peter Deboer replaced onetime Stanley Cup winner Jacques Lemaire as the New Jersey coach and poof, the Devils reached the finals, too. One season after guiding Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup...

PITTSBURGH - The unforgettable theater of Peter Laviolette standing atop the edge of the Flyers' bench, gesturing and waving a freshly broken stick at Pittsburgh's coaching staff last April 1 is as fresh as Scott Hartnell's mocking of Fake Hulk Hogan. Laviolette called Penguins coach Dan Bylsma "gutless" minutes after becoming the first Flyers coach in 13 years to be ejected from a game. The accusation, as Hartnell described it, was for Bylsma putting his "meat" on the ice once the Flyers had the game in-hand.

THE CHICAGO Blackhawks used a strong start against the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday to keep their strong start to the season on a roll. Brent Seabrook and Jonathan Toews each had a goal and an assist to help the Blackhawks beat the visiting Kings, 3-2, extending their season-opening points streak to 15 games. Patrick Sharp also scored for the Blackhawks (12-0-3), who matched the 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers for the second-longest, season-opening points streak in NHL history. Chicago is one away from the tying the league record set by Anaheim in 2006-07 and will try to match the mark on Tuesday when it hosts Vancouver.