The Eastern Conference finals will be a Pennsylvania showdown between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, two of the six expansion clubs to join the league in 1967. They have been rivals for decades, but the young Penguins and rebuilt Flyers don’t have all that much history.

Or do they?

According to AP Sports Writer Alan Robinson, what history they do share coaxed Pens star Evgeni Malkin to say some less-than-complimentary things about his team’s third-round opponent.

In an entertaining look at the history between the two franchises on Monday, Robinson mentioned a few recent incidents that have sparked budding enmity between this spring’s Eastern Conference finalists. Malkin hasn’t forgotten an 8-2 loss in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, when the Flyers bullied the Penguins and knocked them off their game. Flyers fans showered the Pittsburgh bench with popcorn before it was over.

Then there’s the matter of Malkin being cut on the left cheek by the skate of the Flyers’ Mike Richards on March 16. In the teams’ next meeting on April 2, they began fighting less than a minute into Pittsburgh’s 4-2 win, a heated, rough-and-tumble victory that secured the Penguins’ first division crown since 1997-98.

If Philadelphia gained some revenge in the season finale four days later, when a 2-0 victory cost the Penguins the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, a number of Flyers were grumbling. The Penguins rested Sidney Crosby and played a disinterested game.

"Maybe they're scared of us, I don't know," Flyers center Jeff Carter said after the game. "I'm not really into throwing games for matchups in the playoffs. You play to win and you never want to lose a game." By losing their finale, the Penguins faced Ottawa instead of Boston in the first round, and they swept a Senators club that had lost 10 of its final 12 games when the series was over.

It will be Biron in net for sixth-seeded Philadelphia, Marc-Andre Fleury for the No. 2 seed Penguins. Fleury is 8-1 in the postseason and ranks first among the four conference finals starters with a .938 save percentage.

No one has faced more postseason shots than Biron (395 -- an average of 32.9 a game). After allowing four goals in Philadelphia’s Game 1 loss to Montreal in the Eastern Conference semifinals, he posted a .930 save percentage and stopped 133 of 143 shots in four consecutive wins over the Habs.

Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have a long history. For years, it was the Flyers manhandling the Penguins in their 1970s heyday, when Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, Bill Barber and Bill Clement anchored talented Philadelphia teams. And the Flyers have won the last three playoff matchups -- in 1989, 1997 and 2000, overcoming a five-goal, eight-point game by Mario Lemieux (1989) and a five-overtime game in Pittsburgh (2000).

This is a great Pittsburgh team, but the Penguins face a key rival that has already knocked off two of the East’s top three seeds going into the conference finals in Pittsburgh Friday night.

Believe it or not, this is the first time the Flyers and Penguins have met in the conference finals. With the juices flowing in the last few games between them, hockey fans may be in for a memorable series.

Posted by Thom Henninger at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Arizona rookie Max Scherzer was sensational in his major league debut a week ago, working 4.1 perfect innings in relief with seven strikeouts. It was an outing that generated media attention and great expectations for his first big league start Monday night.

The 23-year-old right-hander didn’t fare as well against the Phillies Monday, but you can be sure the heady University of Missouri product learned something from it. In an interview with this writer, three days before he was called up, Scherzer repeatedly discussed his baseball experiences in terms of what he learned from them. As a pitcher, he’s a lot more than a guy who throws hard.

Scherzer gets it to the plate in the mid-90s, but he knows pitching is more than power stuff. He’s worked hard on his secondary pitches, and during our chat before a Triple-A game in Tucson, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of throwing first-pitch strikes and getting ahead of hitters.

“You have to throw a strike 65 percent of the time on the first pitch,” Scherzer said. “Seventy-five-80 percent of the time you need to work ahead of hitters.” Thanks to Tony Vitello, his pitching coach at Missouri, Scherzer has made getting ahead of hitters a far more important tenet than throwing the ball by hitters.

With better secondary pitches this spring, which have aided him in working ahead in the count, Scherzer posted a 1.17 ERA in four starts for Tucson. In 23 innings, he allowed just 12 hits and three walks, and fanned 38.

Then Scherzer went out and proved the value of throwing strikes in his debut. In those 4.1 perfect innings against Houston, he threw 35 of his 47 pitches for strikes. It wasn’t lost on the hard-throwing rookie that the ageless Jamie Moyer was the teacher on Monday night.

“He rope-a-dopes you to death,” Scherzer said after the game. “I know firsthand, he throws a 74-mile-an-hour change, then backs it up with a 71-mile-an-hour change. He’s cutting it to both sides of the plate at 81 or 82, and his fastball’s about the same velocity, but he knows how to pitch. Been doing it a while.”

The full story on Max Scherzer and his approach to pitching will appear in this Friday’s edition of “Thom’s Take.” To see it and track other fantasy news each week, subscribe to STATS Fantasy Advantage. SFA offers 2008 player projections, latest player injury info, team depth charts and “Thom’s Take,” all for the reasonable price of $19.95 for the entire season. Find out more or sign up at stats.com.

Posted by Thom Henninger at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)