Flashback to the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals: The Flyers get worked by the Penguins

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Talk about starting the playoffs off with a whimper. If I put as much effort into this post as the Flyers showed on the ice tonight, I would write about two sentences. The post would get pretty good in the middle but the beginning and the end would be completely worthless.

In a game that looked way too much like the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals, the Penguins manhandled the Flyers in a 4-1 victory to take the first game of the series. The Flyers barely showed up to play, apparently unaware that the playoffs even started today. The Penguins stars led the way as Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby both had a goal and an assist. Marc-Andre Fleury also played well in net for the Penguins when he had to, although there were long stretches where he could have been napping.

The Flyers did show some life in the second period but didn't get any goals to show for it. Inexplicably, the team woke up at the end of the game and decided that beating people would solve all of their problems, getting 21 penalty minutes in the final 20 seconds of the game. They may want to try those kind of tactics when they can actually do the team some good.

There isn't much else to say about the Flyers after this game. Whether it's a matter of the Penguins having their number or that the Flyers simply aren't any good, Philly got worked tonight. We all know that the Flyers can play better than they showed tonight, we have seen it all season long. During stretches, they can be one of the best teams in the league. The problem is, in other stretches, they can be one of the worst. Whichever Flyers team shows up in Game Two will go a long way to determining if this will actually turn into a series.

The optimistic Flyers fan will point to the fact that they lost every Game One in last years playoff run. The pessimistic Flyers fan will point to the fact that they lost Game One against the Penguins last season, too, and we all saw how that turned out.