It’s Scary: Eric And Pals Can Be Better

So what, exactly, do the Philadelphia Flyers think they’re doing?

Winning the Stanley Cup is what they’re doing.

And you suspect they might not even be aware of it.

Overtime or blowout? Doesn’t matter.

Home or away? Doesn’t matter.

Down by 2-0 or ahead by 2-0? Doesn’t matter.

Nothing fazes them. Nothing distracts them. They play along in a zone of bliss.

“Maybe,” said Bob Clarke, the man who assembled the many and disparate parts, “they’re too young to know when they’re supposed to be in trouble.”

Maybe. But there is also cold steel to their play.

The thing is, they have blitzed through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs and haven’t even revved their motor yet. Already they have advanced further than seemed reasonable to expect.

Not only that, but they are making it impossible for us to gauge just how good they really are.

Each round, they are more outrageous. It is one thing to brush aside the less-than-brave Buffalo Sabres; it is quite another to humiliate the defending Stanley Cup champions, and in their own arena besides.

Surely, it can’t be this easy. Can it?

The Flyers are playing with cat-burglar composure, yet there is not so much as a whiff of arrogance or swagger about them. They will not be beating themselves.

If they are aware of what they are doing, they give no hint that they are the least bit impressed with themselves.

More and more you see in them the ingredients that always are present in a championship team, no matter the sport. They include:

Defense. It is where they start, what they emphasize. And they have the comfort of knowing The Big Eraser is back there to rub out mistakes and lapses. Ron Hextall is 8-1, with a 2.44 ERA. He could win the Cy Young with those numbers.

Physicality. The Flyers are a punishing team to have to play. They are body punchers. They pounded the pudding out of the Sabres, and then they left the New York Rangers down on all fours. You cannot run away from them, and you cannot stand and trade with them. They will not be worn down.

Balance. The heroics are spread around. Each game, someone else delivers the pivotal pass, the crucial score, the crumpling hit. With the exception of Hextall, they are not dependent upon one player, or even a handful.

Growth. The Flyers are growing stronger as they go along. They improve each shift, each period, each game, each series. Their line of progression is almost vertical.

So far in these playoffs, the Flyers have been younger, stronger, faster and larger than their opponents.

Also better.

But here is the intriguing part: They can play better still.

Really.

Eric Lindros has more than he has shown.

So does The Line. Lindros and John LeClair and Mikael Renberg already have revolutionized the sport. Every other team in the National Hockey League is on the phone to central casting with the same request: “Gimme Godzilla on blades.”

Yet The Line has not yet unfurled the sort of monster night of which it is capable.

One of these games, but probably only when they need it, Eric Lindros will rumble over the boards and go clanking up and down the ice and score a double hat trick and pass off for a half-dozen more and leave in his considerable wake a trail of prone bodies.

To this point, it has not been necessary for him to do this. But the capability exists, and it is a source of comfort for the Flyers. Having Eric Lindros is like owning the biggest bomb in the arsenal. It does not have to be detonated to be effective. The threat is enough.

The Flyers are playing smart. Translated, they are not taking stupid penalties, in particular the retaliation penalty.

That is the transgression that galls coach Terry Murray like no other. Murray is a fanatic on the subject of playing under control. It shows.

The man behind the Flyers’ bench stands straight as a bayonet, stern as a headmaster. He has a face made for fivecard stud. He hasn’t made a wrong decision yet. Or if he has, no one has caught it.

He measures his team’s progress not by how it does against another team, but by how it does against its potential.

And?

“We can play better,” he said. “Eric and his line can. And our blue-line guys (defensemen) can play better.”

This isn’t coachspeak. He means it.

There are two statistics from the Flyers’ humiliation of the Rangers that tell you just how good the Flyers really are.

First, in each game they allowed the Rangers one fewer goal than in the previous game. The scores were 5-4, 4-3, 5-2, 4-1. If there had been a fifth game, the Rangers would have been shut out.

Second, the Rangers scored only four even-strength goals the entire series, and only two goals when the teams were playing five-on-five. Some stats mean something, and some stats are meaningless. This one is pregnant with meaning.

When you play the defending champions for 240 minutes spread over six days, and they are able to score only twice when both teams are at full strength, it means you have not just won, you have obliterated them.

It means you are playing well enough to win the Stanley Cup.