Fire Offers A Flicker Of Hope

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Game 4 Audio Recap

The Washington Post's Jason La Canfora breaks down the Capitals' 4-3 double-overtime loss to Philadelphia in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

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Philly's phanatics and their street-tough Flyers flat-out TKO'd the nice, little tale about the minor league coach whose team made it big. Yes, the series may have turned decidedly toward Philly on Thursday, but all was not lost for Washington.

Underneath the Flyers players' names, Boudreau had written one word on the chalkboard this morning in the visitors' locker room: resiliency.

If the Caps take nothing away from this loss, they leave Philadelphia with the notion that their hearts are finally beating as furiously as the Flyers and their passionate fans.

From the moment Semin squared off with Daniel Brière in the opening minutes -- placid Alexander Semin! -- Game 4 was on.

The Caps hadn't made the playoffs since 2003, but it might have taken them three games to become a real playoff team. They mixed it up, they put the puck on net instead of passing it around, and, most important, they finally took the hard step forward rather than the artful step sideways.

The energy was infectious, the tension palpable. The tone was set by the kiddie corps early, the 20-something crowd who apparently got tired of being told, "They're kids; they don't know what the Stanley Cup playoffs are about yet."

Backstrom, who never met a barbell he liked, almost went toe-to-toe with Brière during that scrum in the opening minutes. A snowflake in the series up to Game 4, the sedentary Swede was suddenly charged. He scored his first playoff goal moments later.

Same with Semin, who started the little brouhaha and then guided home a power-play rocket just left of the net. He met aggression with aggression each time the Flyers tried to rattle him.

Ovechkin became an ornery chap, too. He camped in front of the crease as if he were the injured Chris Clark, whose work outside the net the Caps have missed the past week. After his first assist Ovechkin glared at the fans, almost mocking their anger. His checks were meaningful, menacing.

All ethnocentric bashing, whispered in the press box and beyond all week, ceased.

The tired cliches about Europeans being soft skaters, unprepared to handle the physical and mental grind of April the way good, old Canadian farm boys do, went out the window in the first 20 minutes. For the first time in four games, the postseason neophytes were finally making the Flyers' hit men pay for their crimes.

This was Evgeni Plushenko skating out to center ice, throwing a haymaker, re-cocking his fist and then asking, "Ya' want a fresh one?"

But they also learned another hard playoff lesson: Sometimes in the postseason, when you take a punch and throw your best one, you still end up on the short end.

Whether the Caps' newfound purpose and desire can be parlayed into a Game 5 victory remains to be seen. Entering Game 4, the notion of a loss turned thoughts to a sentimental -- and slightly strategic -- thought:

Why not give Olie Kolzig a going-away gift for two decades of service in the net? Why not start Kolzig, the former face of the franchise, in what very well could be his last game as a Capital?

But then, as Huet kept turning away shots -- including an amazing, diving, back-handed flail with 10:53 left in regulation -- well, this is no time for sentiment. This is about survival.

And like many of the other Caps on the ice Thursday, Huet deserves to try and prolong the season, to see if the light remains on or merely serves as a reminder of what might have been if the switch had been flicked on earlier.