Let's also not forget that the 97 Red Wings were pretty damn well loaded. Yzerman, Federov, Lidstrom, Shanahan, Larionov, Fetisov, and the rest of those Russians. The Flyers were a good team, but they were overmatched going in to that series.
Looking back now with history as a guide, we can see the '97 Wings as the First of very nice stretch for those players and the Team... That said IIRC the Flyers were favorites with the Home Ice Advantage in hand... The Wings played as well as they should, while the Flyers played like shadows of themselves... The Wing arced up and not only returned to the Dance with many players from that team, but won again with them... The Flyers on the other hand never returned with that group of players and fritted away their chance. It is not that the Flyers lost to what ended up to be nothing short of a great group of players ready to start their run, it's the fact that the Flyers embarrassed themselves and didn't give themselves a sniff at a chance at the Cup. I don't have stats in front of me, but I can remember that the stars of the Flyers did not shine.
... SI wrote the following about the Flyers of that Series:
The choking incident
It isn't much of a word, but then Philadelphia didn't play much of a series. Defenseman Eric Desjardins uttered that description, give or take a yie, last Friday, some 14 hours after Detroit had waxed Philly 6-1 in Game 3 and 10 minutes after Murray .. had stunned a gathering of reporters by saying, "It is basically a choking situation ... for our team right now."
In the first three games, seven of the Red Wings' 14 goals had come off blatant defensive errors or odd-man rushes, and the Flyers had scored only one goal at even strength. What's more, Hextall and Snow had each allowed a 55-plus-foot, kick-your-team-in-the-groin goal; Detroit enforcer Joe Kocur, a beer league refugee who has the shooting touch of a stevedore, had one more goal than Philly star Eric Lindros; and only two Flyers, Rod Brind'Amour and John LeClair, had even scored. All in all, Murray might have stumbled upon the mot juste.
Expressions like salary cap and commercial flight are sure to raise the hackles of a pro athlete, but none guarantees a more visceral response than the word choke ...
"It's probably easier coming from the media," Desjardins said. "But I don't think any pro athlete likes to hear that, especially from his coach." ...
On Friday, as Murray was talking himself into trouble, Lindros, the Philadelphia captain, was heading for safety. After an emotional team meeting, he slipped out of the rink, leaving his teammates to face the media firestorm over the "choking situation." After five seasons in the NHL, the 24-year-old Lindros still has trouble with accountability. He could have scribbled a little happy face on the bleakness, talked about his own play and maybe even bailed out Murray, although given Lindros's cool relationship with the coach, that would have been a stretch. Instead he took the easy way out ...
Lindros, who scored his only goal of the series with 14.8 seconds remaining in Game 4, is hockey's dominant player, but when things don't go his way, he looks as if he wants to stamp his feet and sulk. Sure, the Philadelphia goalies lived down to modest expectations and the Flyers' defense was careless, but as the franchise player, Lindros is expected to carry the team. "A great player has to earn the right to be great," Murray said.
You can read the entire article here:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/hockey/nhl/features/si_stanley_cup/1997/
