Marty’s Better

 This is gonna be quick, but I’m not sold on the Pens.  After the jump, why. 

After watching the Pens dismantle the Flyers tonight, I came home to a few articles on how the Pens are this unstoppable force because they’ve won 11 of 12 games, and have gotten out to a 3-0 lead in each series.  Look, that’s all fantastic, but they haven’t played a good team yet in the playoffs.  First, the Senators played their best hockey in October, and rolled over starting in February.  The Rangers were not a deep team, and actually played the Pens pretty tight.  But the Rangers had the benefit of playing a bad Devils team in round one, and then lost their series with the Pens when they blew a 3-0 lead in game 1.  Now, the Pens are destroying the Flyers.  And sure, this is the Conference Finals, so the Flyers in theory should be a very good team.  Problem is, they’re not.  They’ve gotten where they are the same way they’ve gotten anywhere these last 15 years.  They’ve ridden a mediocre goalie who gets hot at the right time and then comes back to earth at the worst possible time.  This years version of Hextall/Snow/Burke/Cechmanek/Boucher/Nittymaki, is Martin Biron.  Honestly, can anyone reading this envision a scenario where Martin Biron backstops a team to a Stanley Cup?  Yeah, me neither.  The Flyers had the benefit of playing a pretty thin Washington team in round one.  Then they got a Montreal team that refused to be physical and couldn’t get saves at the right time.  Now, suddenly, the one dimensional Flyers have lost two big players to injury, and Biron’s come back to earth.  Unfortunately, those two things happened at exactly the same time.  And now Pittsburgh will coast into the Cup Final getting all the fanfare.  All this while Detroit has dismantled their last two opponents after a slow start to the post season.  If, and it’s really not even worth saying “if,” we get a Pens/Wings Final, I’m saying right now, it’s Wings in 5.  

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