The Boston Bruins have played an excellent series so far against the Flyers. Boston deserves to be up 3-0 in the series. They've skated with passion, played physically, finished plays and gotten excellent goaltending from Tim Thomas. In addition, Claude Julien has outcoached Peter Laviolette. The Bruins have been a better team than the Flyers since the All-Star break of the regular season, and it has come to roost in this series.

That said, the disparity between the teams should not be this wide. Games 1 and 3 have been blowouts and, while Game 2 went to overtime and the Flyers held an early 2-0 lead, Boston by far was the better club in the first two periods. If last night's game is any barometer, it would take a take a mini-miracle simply to get the series back to Philly for Game 5 much less even whisper about a comeback like last year's.

Heading into last night's game, the one thing the Flyers absolutely, positively could not afford was to find themselves chasing the game early. A pair of horrific coverage breakdowns and a stoppable shot getting past Brian Boucher later, and Philly was in a two-goal hole with the game just 1:03 old. But there were still almost 59 minutes of hockey left to played -- plenty of time to stop the bleeding, get a goal back by the end of the first period and generally match Boston's effort and intensity.

Instead, the Flyers skated like their feet had been dipped in cement. They were sitting ducks for the Bruins to blast with big hits. Boston hardly had to break a sweat defensively, as Philly barely worked the puck off the perimeter. When they did get a shot in half-decent position, they often passed it up looking for a "better" opportunity that just wasn't there. Boston won just about every board battle and dominated the faceoff circle to the tune of winning 78% of the draws. Philadelphia simply failed to compete.

Sean O'Donnell tried to give the team a spark when the game was still within reach. Dropping the gloves with Nathan Horton took a player who has been killing the Flyers off the ice for five minutes and the fight itself should have given the team an emotional jolt. Unfortunately for the Flyers, the energy burst lasted all of one strong shift immediately after the fight, followed by Boston quickly putting the clamps down again.

While the game was still within reach, I commented that this was the type of game where the Flyers missed Ian Laperriere. He did so many little things -- won battles, delivered big hits, fought, got under an opponent's skin, blocked shots -- that could help turn momentum to his team's side when nothing else seemed to be going right.

Most certainly, the Flyers miss having (at least a semi-healthy) Chris Pronger in the lineup. Jeff Carter battled gamely through a sprained MCL. Danny Briere has clearly been laboring ever since taking a shot off the foot in Game 2. It's also a poorly kept secret that both Ville Leino (hip) and Kimmo Timonen have been at well less than 100 percent for months and Timonen in particular seems to have lost his confidence in the offensive zone. None of this excuses subpar individual or team performances in the series, but these players were all key components in reaching the Stanley Cup Finals last year and being neck-and-neck with Vancouver for the best record in the NHL through midseason of this year.

In Game 2, James van Riemsdyk and, to a lesser extent, Claude Giroux were making good things happen for the Flyers throughout the game. Last night, I'm hard pressed to think of a single Flyers forward who played well, except perhaps the fourth line on a few shifts.

In regard to the goaltending, all I can say is that strong and weak goalie play and team play often walk hand in hand. When a team's goalies consistently allow stoppable shots to get by, it saps energy and confidence. On the flip side, when a good team knows it can rely on its goalie to make all the routine saves and many of the tough ones, the players skate taller and are better able to battle through adversity.

In no way am I pinning the Flyers predicament in this series solely on the shoulders of Brian Boucher. But he has been just as bad as the rest of the team in this series, and he has suffered letdowns at times when the Flyers needed their goalie to be their best player. Sergei Bobrovsky isn't really a better option -- the Flyers don't have a better option the rest of these playoffs. But I don't care if Bernie Parent in his prime were in goal for the Flyers in Games 1 and 3. They'd still be trailing in this series with the way they've been manhandled in all three zones.

Last year, even when the Flyers were in a 3-0 hole in the series, they could take solace in the fact that the games had largely been evenly played. This time around, there really isn't much on which the Flyers can hang their hats, except for this: If Philly finds a way to win Game 4, perhaps the Bruins start to question themselves and it snowballs. It's not much, but as long as there's another playoff game to be played, a team still has its fate in its own hands.

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