Flyers take 3-1 lead over Blackhawks in Game 4 on goals by Richards, Carle

Richards, Carle give Flyers 3-1 lead

PHILADELPHIA — Michael Leighton had 23 saves, Mike Richards and Matt Carle scored unassisted goals and the Philadelphia Flyers led the Chicago Blackhawks 3-1 after two periods in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals on Friday night.

After a fast-paced opening period, the teams settled in and slowed things down in a scoreless second.

Leighton stopped 13 shots in the period but the Flyers didn’t generate much offensively.

Coming off an overtime win, the Flyers are trying to even the series at 2 games apiece and pull within two wins of their first championship since the second of consecutive titles in 1975.

Just five seconds into Philadelphia’s second power-play opportunity early in the first, Richards skated behind the net, stole the puck from defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson and backhanded a shot past Antti Niemi for his seventh goal of the playoffs and a 1-0 lead.

Carle scored his first goal of the postseason later in the period, wristing a shot from inside the right circle to give the Flyers their first two-goal lead of the series.

Chicago cut it to 2-1 when Patrick Sharp’s slap shot deflected off Flyers defenseman Braydon Coburn’s stick and slid past Leighton with 1:28 left in the first.

But Claude Giroux made it 3-1 just 51 seconds later with his 10th goal of the playoffs. Kimmo Timonen set it up with a nifty pass to a wide-open Giroux, who was alone at the side of the net. Giroux scored the winner in OT Wednesday night.

The Blackhawks haven’t won it all since 1961. But the odds favor Chicago. Only two of the previous 33 teams that lost the first two games on the road came back to win. The Penguins did it last year, beating Detroit on the road in Game 7 after trailing the series 2-0 and 3-2.

An orange-clad, sellout crowd of 20,304 that included Vice President Joe Biden rocked the Wachovia Center and gave the Flyers a Philly-style home-ice advantage. They booed the Blackhawks when they skated out and taunted Niemi by chanting “An-tti! An-tti!”

Led by Leighton, the Flyers skated onto the ice to the obligatory “Rocky” theme song. Fans roared when Lauren Hart, the daughter of longtime former Flyers broadcaster Gene Hart, sang “God Bless America,” alternating lyrics with Kate 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. The Flyers entered with an 87-22-4 record when Smith sang.

Many hockey pundits predicted this finals matchup in the preseason, but it sure didn’t seem likely a few months ago when Philadelphia changed coaches from John Stevens to Peter Laviolette and was 14th in the 15-team East.

The Flyers needed a shootout victory in the regular-season finale against the New York Rangers just to get in the playoffs, overcame numerous injuries to key players and kept their run going with an historic comeback against Boston in the second round.

The seventh-seeded Flyers knocked off New Jersey in five games and then staged one of the greatest comebacks in sports history by rallying from both a 3-0 series deficit and 3-0 hole in Game 7 to beat the Bruins on Simon Gagne’s power-play goal. They beat Montreal in five games to reach the finals for the first time since 1997.

Chicago’s road to the finals was much easier. The Blackhawks finished second in the West and breezed past Nashville and Vancouver before sweeping top-seeded San Jose in the conference finals.

Both teams made lineup changes. Chicago forward Andrew Ladd returned after missing three games with an undisclosed injury he sustained in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals. Adam Burish sat out to make room for Ladd. The Blackhawks also swapped out defensemen, inserting Nick Boynton into the lineup for the first time this postseason. He replaced Jordan Hendry.

The Flyers sat enforcer Dan Carcillo and put James van Riemsdyk back in after sitting him two games.