Posted by Scott Burnside
We had a chance to chat with Flyers forward Daniel Briere after Philadelphia's skate Wednesday morning and he said the Flyers have to channel their anger from letting home ice slip away from them in the final game of the regular season against the New York Rangers to this playoff series.
"You have to block it out," Briere told ESPN.com. "We were all mad at what happened."
Both Briere and coach John Stevens take issue with the characterization that the Flyers played poorly down the stretch. The record may not have been great (they finished 3-4-1), "but we played a lot of good games," Briere said.
The problem has been a failure to avoid crucial lapses in some of those games. "That's what's getting us in trouble lately," Briere said.
Stevens said he thought the Flyers had done a nice job of tightening up defensively and their special-teams play was better as the playoffs approached.
"I don't agree with everybody's assessment of how we finished the season," Stevens said. "In my opinion, we did a lot of things we needed to do."
Although there have been concerns about the health of defensemen Randy Jones and Ryan Parent, Stevens said they were both good to go and the team was as healthy as it's been all season.
While most of the focus will be on the teams' big guns -- Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Mike Richards and Jeff Carter -- Stevens predicted role players, like Pascal Dupuis and Maxime Talbot in Pittsburgh and Arron Asham and rookie Claude Giroux for the Flyers, are going to have an impact on this series.
ESPN.com Stanley Cup playoffs blog
