(Charles LeClaire/USA Today)
PITTSBURGH - The names were hard to hate, mostly because you'd never heard of them before. It had been 291 days since the Flyers had upped their winning streak against the Penguins to eight, and the indifference that names such as Olli Maatta, Ben Dumoulin and Bryan Rust evoked when the teams finally met Thursday night was not overwhelmed by any plays or shenanigans of their more recognized and despised stars.
Yes, Sidney Crosby scored an impossible wide-angle goal that harkened to his Olympic gold-medal winner and Evgeni Malkin did his puck-possession magic at times, despite Scott Laughton and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare doing their best to fill in for injured Sean Couturier - Malkin's regular blanket since these teams last met in a playoff game nearly four years ago.