In April 2008, a young, talented and inexperienced Philadelphia Flyers team marched down to D.C. and overthrew the higher-seeded Washington Capitals in a grueling seven-game series.

Almost all the players from that team have departed in one form another. Their nameplates hang in locker rooms across the league. A different owner signs their checks. A different fanbase lives and dies with their every move.

But it's April again, and once more, a talented and inexperienced Flyers team begins its playoff sojourn, one of the most-fascinating and compelling endeavors in the world of sports, against one of its biggest rivals.

The similarities between this team and the one from 2008 don't end with the underdog label, The '08 squad launched its regular-season campaign in vengeance mode, searching to erase its worst season in the franchise's history. Imported were young stars -- Joffrey Lupul, Scott Hartnell -- and former captains -- Danny Briere, Kimmo Timonen, Jason Smith. They joined forces with the home-grown talent, Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, to open a new chapter in Flyers history.

This season, the Flyers once again dedicated themselves to change after an embarrassing loss to the Bruins in the playoffs. The front office jettisoned Richards and Carter to pull in a fresh crop of young talent with promising potential.

Another obvious parallel between the '08 and '12 Flyers is the goaltending positioin, the centerpiece of postseason potential and the Achilles heel of Philadelphia's playoff outlook. In 2008, Martin Biron made his postseason debut for the Flyers. This season, another A-list goalie with a B last name, Ilya Bryzgalov, looks to warrant the nine-year $51 million contract the Flyers threw him in the offseason.

With so many new young faces entering the 2011-12 season -- Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, Sean Couturier and Matt Read, to name a few -- coupled with some veteran acquisitions in Max Talbot and Jaromir Jagr, the buzzword became chemistry. As the season progressed, the team came together and played well above the expectations.

But everything changes in the playoffs.

Can this group hit its stride against a favored Pittsburgh team? Can it find success with the spunk and confidence the '08 Flyers demonstrated? Or will it be another early playoff exit?



1) Goaltending. Despite an overwhelming popular opinion, a team can win without the best masked man between the pipes. Sure, the Bruins rode Tim Thomas through parts of last season, and there's a reason the Devils won three Stanley Cups under Brodeur. But the Flyers have made runs with goalies less talented than Bryzgalov. The girth of his contract indicates Bryzgalov is the Flyers' guy for quite some time, and he's not earning that by talking about tigers during the regular season. This is where the Flyers find out what they have invested for most of the next decade.

Bryzgalov has played well for the Flyers overall, but his horrible dips in performance followed by streaks of solid play raise the proverbial red flags. Philadelphia's talented enough to give him plenty of support. He doesn't need to pitch four shutouts. But if Pittsburgh's potent offense manages to shell him in one of the early games -- say games two through four -- the Flyers might lose him for the series. At the other end, Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury has all the playoff experience missing from Bryzgalov's resume. "The Flower" has given up his share of goals, but he might be the biggest reason Pittsburgh stayed afloat during Sidney Crosby's concussion.

2) Toughness. Over the last 40-plus years, the Flyers have rarely entered a playoff series with a disadvantage in the size or snarl categories. While Simmonds, Hartnell and Talbot throw themselves after pucks in corners, charge the net and stand their ground, the Flyers as a whole are undersized. And when the they lost Chris Pronger to a season-long battle with concussion symptons, they lost their biggest, meanest player. The Penguins don't fear the Flyers anymore. Not physically, at least. And that was an advantage that the Flyers wore as part of their franchise identity for decades. Niklas Grossmann has supplemented some of that Philly toughness, and Schenn has thrown the body as well as anyone through the second half of the season, but the Flyers need to find a way to punish the Penguins shift after shift, period after period in order to keep up.

3) Malkin and Crosby are pretty good. Pittsburgh's two superstars are going to score. How hard they have to work to get there, though, is a huge key to this series. Matt Carle did a fantastic job at frustrating them in the season finale, even when the Penguins forced the puck to Malkin, who was looking for 50th goal. But Carle gave Malkin some extra space on a power play in the second period, and Malkin immediately reached his milestone.

There are so many storylines to cover for this series. Talbot and Jagr, two of the Penguins' biggest postseason heroes, are returning in enemy colors. Claude Giroux blossomed into a marquee name this season. Pascal Dupuis is playing the best hockey of his career for the Penguins. But this will have to do for tonight.

It's an experienced, physical Pittsburgh team against a young, resilient Flyers team. It's expected to be another long, ugly, hot-tempered affair, another compelling endeavor in the litany of compelling endeavors of postseason hockey. It's another 2008, another postseason, another defining moment for the Flyers, the Penguins and hockey in general.

And it never gets old.

Prediction: I like this Flyers team a lot, and I think it can make a run similar to the one in 2008. However, I think the Penguins are just too strong and too experienced to give in. If I had to put money on it, I'd say Penguins in six.

P.S. It feels really good to write like this. I haven't done a whole lot of it, and it probably shows. And I should probably write outside of beyond-bedtime. But this is fun.