Blackhawks-Flyers go to overtime tied at 3
Ville Leino answered Patrick Kane's first goal of the series early in the third period with one of his own 20 seconds later and the Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Blackhawks went to overtime tied at 3 in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday night.
Kane scored his eighth goal of the playoffs on a breakaway to give Chicago a 3-2 lead 2:50 into the third.
But Leino knocked in a rebound for his sixth goal to tie it at 3.
Chicago goalie Antti Niemi withstood a flurry of shots in the third, stopping 14 of the 15 shots he faced.
The Blackhawks are two wins shy of their first championship since 1961, while the Flyers haven't won it all since the second of consecutive titles in 1975.
The odds favor Chicago. Only two team teams in 33 tries have won the first two games at home and lost the series. Just four teams have rallied from a 2-0 series hole in the Stanley Cup finals to win it all.
One of those teams - Pittsburgh - did it last year. The Penguins beat Detroit on the road in Game 7 after trailing the series 3-2.
After tying an NHL record with five goals in the first period of Game 1, the teams have combined for one goal in the opening frame of the next two.
Brent Sopel scored his first goal of the playoffs late in the second to pull the Blackhawks into a 2-2 tie. Sopel scored on a one-timer after John Madden beat Mike Richards on a faceoff.
The Flyers went up 2-1 when Scott Hartnell was credited with his fifth goal of the postseason following a video review. Hartnell's power-play goal midway through the second period took a couple minutes of playing time and review time before going up on the scoreboard.
Chris Pronger took a slap shot from just inside the blue line that deflected off Hartnell and trickled past Niemi, but defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson poked it out of the net and play continued for another 1:42 even though the red light went on.
Officials finally reviewed it after the next whistle and put the elapsed time back on the clock after declaring the goal.
Duncan Keith's second goal of the playoffs early in the second tied it at 1. Keith scored on a one-timer from the top of the left faceoff circle. His shot deflected off Flyers forward Jeff Carter's stick. Kane got an assist on the goal for his first point of the series, and Jonathan Toews later assisted on Kane's goal for his first point.
Danny Briere scored his 11th goal of the playoffs late in the first to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead. Briere flipped a shot into an open net off a backhand pass from a falling-down Hartnell on the power play. Niemi stopped Braydon Coburn's initial shot, but was out of position after Hartnell's acrobatic play.
Michael Leighton, who was pulled after giving up five goals in Game 1, made 22 saves through the first three periods. Niemi stopped 28 shots.
The Blackhawks took the opener 6-5 in a frenetic-paced, back-and-forth shootout. Both defenses tightened up in Game 2 as Chicago earned a 2-1 victory.
In the first Stanley Cup finals game at the Wachovia Center in 13 years, a boisterous sellout crowd of 20,297 - the largest ever to watch an NHL game in Pennsylvania - did everything it could to give Philadelphia the home-ice advantage. The orange-clad fans wore T-shirts featuring a photo of a singing Kate Smith and the words: ``Broad Street Believin'''
The ``Let's Go Flyers!'' chants started more than 30 minutes before the puck dropped. The roars were deafening when Lauren Hart, the daughter of longtime former Flyers broadcaster Gene Hart, sang ``God Bless America,'' alternating lyrics with Smith, who was on a video image. Smith's rendition of the song has been a rallying anthem for the Flyers since the mid 1970s.
