Therien's Take: The Bubble and the Fish Bowl

The Philadelphia Flyers were the first team to arrive at the Secure Zone (AKA "the Bubble") in Toronto this past Sunday, as all 12 of the Eastern Conference teams participating in postseason play at Scotiabank Arena gathered to prepare for their first games. On Tuesday, the Flyers earned a deserved 3-2 overtime win against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the lone exhibition game for either team.

The Flyers dominated the first period, despite trailing early. They looked strong on their three penalty kills and lone power play. Carter Hart wasn't tested much, but made the saves he needed to make to keep the Penguins to a single goal. Brian Elliott was excellent in the third period and beyond. It was all finished off by a nice Scott Laughton goal upstairs on a semi-breakaway created by a tape-to-tape stretch pass from Travis Konecny.

Some thoughts on the Penguins: I don't know how much of it was rust from the stoppage and missed time in camp, how much was strong checking by the Flyers, and how much of it was a lack of adrenaline rush in an empty area but Sidney Crosby was very quiet all game. He was held without a shot on goal.

Evgeni Malkin, for two periods, was noticeable but not in positive ways for his team. He committed an awful giveaway -- just a lazy, unfocused turnover right onto Kevin Hayes' stick. Later, on a Penguins power play, Malkin got knocked to the ice by Michael Raffl. Malkin, who in my opinion, is one of the more hot-headed and easily goaded players in the NHL (so is teammate Kris Letang) and also a dirty player in sneaky ways appeared on the brink of losing his cool. If it had been anything but an exhibition game, he might have.

To his credit, Malkin reeled himself back in and was the best player on the ice in the third period. It took two great saves by Elliott to keep him from scoring. Finally, a Malkin faceoff win and subsequent multi-shot scramble around the Flyers net resulted in Jason Zucker sending the game to OT.

As exhibition games go, this one was pretty well played. I expected things to get sloppy as the game progressed and for there to be some tired legs in the third period. That was, in fact, the case but it's no cause for alarm on either side.

For the Flyers, it was a good first step after four-and-a-half months without a game. Now the game outcomes will begin to matter.

The Flyers will start a three-game round-robin on Sunday as they meet the President's Trophy winning Boston Bruins. For the next week, the Flyers will be playing with house money as they play one game apiece with the Bruins, Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning. The Flyers can't move down from their current No. 4 seeding for the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals but they can move up to the first, second or third seed depending on how things go in the round-robin.

The NHL did a good job at making the empty Scotiabank Arena look attractive for television. The tarps presented much nicer than row after row of unoccupied seats would, or random cardboard cutout "fans." The pumped-in and market localized fan noise, PA announcements and localized dasherboard ads, recreated a semblance of a home rink feel, at least for viewers.

However, one thing that was noticeable immediately for anybody that ever played a playoff series in Toronto is that it is virtually impossible to create exactly what it's like to play -- and stay -- in that city during a playoff series.

Whereas, right now, the players are in a "bubble" at the rink and their team hotel, a playoff series in Toronto is normally a fishbowl rather than a bubble. The media hounds you at all hours. You are recognized wherever you go. It is made clear to you, 24 hours a day, that your team is Public Enemy No. 1.

I played the Leafs twice in the playoffs -- in 1999 and 2003 -- and the running joke amongst the players in the locker room was that The Fan 590 was well aware at what time players got up, what time they ate, and even when they went to the bathroom.

As hockey-crazy as Flyers fans are, and as much media attention as we received from the local media at playoff time -- we knew it was playoff time, because certain reporters who hadn't been to a game all year would suddenly show up.

In Philly, the questions from the extended press generally fell into one of four categories: Some would ask the standard "How does it feel to be leading/trailing in the series?" stuff. Some tried to be a little more hard-hitting, and basically want you to boil down to one or two reasons why you won or lost.

Some would avoid hockey-related questions altogether, and ask things that you could tell were going to appear in a story about the city or the personalities on the team. Then there were a few who would quickly get themselves in over their heads by trying to ask X-and-O questions despite a clear lack of knowledge of the sport. Jeremy Roenick once had fun telling a reporter who asked about our "fast break" that ours was pretty good, but the LA Lakers did it better.

The "As they say in hockey, let's do that hockey!" sketch on SNL is hilarious. Any player, coach or bonafide hockey reporter who has ever been in the room when a reporter who lacks hockey background or knowledge tries weakly to fake it, gets a knowing chuckle from the Lazlo Holmes character.

When we played in Toronto, it was quite different. The questioning was relentless and it drove down to the most minute details of your every shift in the series.The reporters in the scrums surrounded you and just about brawled with each another to elbow their way in and get the next question.

It got pretty intense, and woe to the player who ticked off the Leafs' media or fans!

On our team, JR gleefully sparred with the reporters about his running battle with Darcy Tucker and his high-stick on Alexander Mogilny in 2003. I wasn't around by the time of the 2004 rematch with the Leafs -- I'd been traded to the Stars -- but players like Roenick and Robert Esche have said it was the biggest media circus they ever dealt with in their careers.

Fans were all over you, even as you walked to the arena from the hotel. Trust me, you NEVER forgot where you were and who you were playing against. You were the enemy. Here's an example: After a team skate in Toronto, a fan handed one of our goalies, Robert Esche, a stack of cards to autograph. Chico obliged. Then the guy said something like "Who'd want YOUR autograph? You're a nobody!". He tore up the signed cards and tossed the pieces at Chico, who could only laugh.

Even the hotel scene was crazy. One of the playoff years against the Leafs (I forget if it was 1999 or 2003 but I think it was the latter), a local radio station somehow found out the players' room numbers and placed phone calls in the wee hours just to ensure no one on the visiting team got a good night's sleep. In 2003, there were knocks on the doors at all hours of the night Soon, we had to have our own security detail.

Another great story: The Dalai Lama was staying at the same hotel we did. Our head coach, Ken Hitchcock, even had a conversation with him, although the Dalai Lama had no idea who he was and HItch couldn't think of anything to ask him.

So, yeah, life in the fishbowl during a playoff series against Toronto was never dull for one moment. You know what, though. It was GREAT. We all felt like we were part of something special. I'm not knocking the Toronto fans or media at all here. I'm just trying to describe how much larger-than-life the whole thing felt. It wasn't even a conference final, let alone a Stanley Cup Final but the whole city lived and died on every game.

For us, it also made the series victory in 2003 feel that much sweeter. We won that series at home in Game 7. I wasn't there the next year, when Roenick scored in OT of Game 6 to win the series on the road, but my buddies who were still on the team have told me that they never heard a building go from so loud to so quiet in the blink of an eye; deafening screaming to funereal silence. I'd have loved to be there to experience it. Same thing with a playoff series against Montreal; we never had one against the Habs during my playing days, but that would have been amazing.

That's part of what makes it so different this year when you see players competing in front of no fans and without any direct media contact. There are precisely timed Zoom sessions that move along briskly and then are over after about 10-15 minutes. Sometimes, even our role players alone would face 10 minutes of questioning at their lockers during a series against the Leafs. Personally, I enjoyed the media circus and the crowds of 100 or more autograph seekers who would literally chase players as they walked. I think it helped bring us closer as a team because we were all in the line of fire.

Now with players staying in the Bubble in Toronto -- where they cannot leave, and where they travel across a sealed off underground walkway -- it is a whole different type of team bonding. You are together 24/7 for weeks on end, albeit with your own private rooms. There's no fan contact. Media contact is limited to the aforementioned Zoom sessions. You're either going to bond or you're going to go home real fast. There's no distractions.

In 1999, we allowed only nine goals in six games to the Leafs and yet lost that series. In 2003, it was an absolute war of a series from Games 1 to 6, and then we finally won Game 7 in a blowout. It felt vindicating at the time, because that 2003 Leafs teams had Cup aspirations and we knocked them out in the first round. Unfortunately, it took a lot out of us to do so. It still bothers me that, after we lost in five to Ottawa in 2002, we came up short in Games 5 and 6 in a rematch against the Senators the next year. On the heels of beating a Leafs team that was stacked with talent, it hurt badly that we couldn't roll the momentum through the Ottawa series.

Nonetheless, I will remember fondly forever that 2003 series and have great memories of the chaos in Toronto, the electricity in the arena, and the bond within our team from having gone through it together. The Eastern Conference team that gets out of Toronto bubble and goes on to the Edmonton bubble for the Conference Final and Stanley Cup Final will no doubt take away unique memories they'll cherish for the rest of their lives. It'll just be different.