VOORHEES, N.J.They leave for Pittsburgh tomorrow afternoon.
On Monday, the Flyers will be using two sheets of ice at Voorhees to practicea longer practice than usual since they were off on Easter Sunday.
I love it, Giroux said of the anticipation. I think the guys are going to be pretty excited and its going to be easy for us to get ready for those kind of games and weve been pretty successful in their building so I think its important for us to go out their and be confident about that.
Its going to be a tough series and its going to be a lot of funand thats what hockeys all about.
The Flyers won 4 of 6 games from the Penguins this season. The dynamic is interesting: the Flyers had great success against Pittsburgh, who had great success against the Rangers, who owned the Flyers this season.
I don't think it matters what happens during a season between us and them, Giroux said.
We gotta make sure when the puck drops Wednesday we're jumping and winning battles. They have a lot of players that can make plays and score goals, so we gotta make sure we're responsible defensively.
NHL
Matt Read is looking toward the return trip to Pittsburgh. He finished the regular season leading all rookie in goal scoring with 24.
It is going to be pretty exciting, Read said. I think it is a good matchup for us.
The Flyers need a quick start in this playoff series. No more fussing about with slow starts, bad opening periods and such.
It was an issue for the Flyers back in October and remained an issue to the very end of the regular season in April.
Yeah, especially against good teams, Scott Hartnell said. Teams that are making the playoffs are all hunting for the same thing and that's a Stanley Cup.
You get down one or two-nothing, three-nothing, you don't find those epic comebacks that you do in game 35, game 52 and things like that. We got to be mentally sharp and that's probably our biggest problem, not being mentally ready to play these games.
Jaromir Jagr is confident the Flyers can win this series. But he cautions that just because the Flyers had great success in the regular season doesnt mean it translates over.
Well of course it's just a bit of confidence that you can beat them but on the other side playoffs is totally different, Jagr said.
You start from 0-0 and let's face it if the team we played first round was against the Rangers and lost all of them I'd still think we have a chance to win.
Sometimes you are kind of lucky all year against one team but playoffs are totally different.
E-mail Tim Panaccio at tpanotch@comcast.net