Some thoughts from the NHL on TSN panel on Friday night.
I've never seen anything like this before, and the numbers alone don't even begin to do it justice.
When you look at this Philadelphia Flyers team, they came into this series minus Jeff Carter, minus Ian Laperriere, minus Simon Gagne.
During the series they lost Brian Boucher, their number one goaltender. They brought in their older number one goaltender, but at the end of the day they got Simon Gagne back for Game 4 and life has been good for the Flyers since then.
This too many men on the ice penalty? You don't write stories like that. Gagne scores the goal that gives the win to the Flyers. What a phenomenal effort by the Flyers, what a phenomenal job by their head coach Peter Laviolette.
I know when Al Arbour did this with the New York Islanders in 1975, he got all sorts of credit for saying, 'Hey, if there's anybody in this room who doesn't believe we're going to make it, get out of here right now.'
Laviolette did everything along the way to stay the course, to keep his troops calm, cool and collected.