Have you glanced at the NHL Eastern Conference Standings lately? Four points separate the top five teams, and we're smack in the middle of them. Here are the top 5 at this moment.
Tampa Bay Lightning - 88 points
Philadelphia Flyers - 88 points
Toronto Maple Leafs - 86 points
Ottawa Senators - 84 points
Boston Bruins - 84 points
Last night, two of our competitors for the conference crown faced off against each other when the Senators came to Philly. From all accounts, this was an absolutely wild game. To quote today's Philadelphia Inquirer, the Flyers made a statement "with a punishing, brawling 5-3 victory, but lost in translation was the fact that their already depleted defense corps suffered two more casualties. The game ended with all-out brawling that included goalies Robert Esche of the Flyers and Patrick Lalime of the Senators. In all, 23 players were ejected. The Flyers' Donald Brashear, who picked up a game-high 34 penalty minutes, destroyed Rob Ray to trigger the fights, and then everyone paired off."
There were five consecutive brawls in the final two minutes and the two teams set an NHL record with 419 penalty minutes in total. The Flyers had seven players remaining and Ottawa had six as the game ended. This game couldn't have gone any better for Leaf fans. There were injuries, there may be some ejections and on April 2nd, just before the end of the regular season, the Sens return to Philly for a rematch. I love it when our enemies take themselves out. It's so much easier this way.
