To say the least, this has been a frustrating holiday weekend of Stanley Cup Final hockey for the Flyers. They are not out of this series yet, but are now faced with an extremely difficult task of not just having to defend their home ice in both of the next two games but to follow that up with a Game 5 win in Chicago in order to gain an upper hand and restore a slight margin for error. That's why teams in the Flyers' current situation have a 2-32 series record, although the feat of coming back to win after dropping the first two games was accomplished last year by Pittsburgh.

It's not impossible to recover, even against a team as good as the Hawks, but it's going to take a much more complete performance than the Flyers showed in either of the first two games. What is so maddening is the fact that both Games 1 and 2 were winnable. But the close outcomes are also something that can give the Flyers hope as the series shifts to Philadelphia. The Flyers need to build off their third period from last night's game and go from there.

Unfortunately, last night, the Flyers generated next to nothing in the tighter-checking, scoreless opening period and then suffered a pair of killer meltdowns late in the second period.

As much as anyone on the ice, I fault Flyers' coach Peter Laviolette for the first Chicago goal. Why on earth did he keep the third defense pairing on the ice after a stoppage of play? The duo of Lukas Krajicek and Oskars Bartulis is NOT who you want out there against Marian Hossa, Patrick Sharp and Troy Brouwer. Michael Leighton compounded things by not controlling a rebound of Brouwer's shot and Hossa beat Krajicek for the put-back.

Twenty-eight second later, Leighton let in a backbreaker on a shot from beyond the right circle by ex-Flyer Ben Eager. The goal, which proved to be the game-winner, made a third period comeback very unlikely.

To their credit, the Flyers kept battling and nearly pulled off the feat, but the team chasing the game in the third period far more often than not is the team that loses.

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