Flyers and Penguins: Bad Blood Spills into Game 3...Literally

The Flyers vs. Penguins Game 3 featured fights, ejections, more fights, a lot of goals and some more fights.

All the game needed was for players to throw haymakers at drunk, erratic fans and the Indiana Pacers/Detroit Pistons brawl from 2004 would have gotten a strong run for it's money.

It is no secret that both the Flyers and the Penguins want to be the supreme team in Pennsylvania. But at what cost?

After what seemed to be a never-ending first period that featured 18 penalties and three ejections, the game looked more like something out of Slapshot than a playoff game (although sometimes the two can be mistaken for one another).

The NHL postseason has the intensity of the NFL, the speed of the NBA and the history of the MLB, all wrapped into one dangerous, crowd-pleasing phenomenon.

Despite the fact that both teams' netminders were solid all throughout the regular season, this postseason has been anything but solid. Both Marc-Andre Fleury and Ilya Bryzgalov have underperformed greatly in the first round.

With the Flyers taking the first two games in Pittsburgh, the Penguins went into "desperation mode" almost as fast as Ozzie Guillen after talking about Fidel Castro.

The Pens lost both games at home after blowing a lead in each contest, and tried to prove to the Flyers that they weren't going away without a fight.

And fight they did.

Even unnecessary, dirty fights like the low-blow Pittsburgh's Arron Asham delivered to Philadelphia's Brayden Schenn in retaliation for Schenn's clean, yet explosive check on Matt Cooke.

Even Sidney Crosby joined in on the fun, doing his best to show the rest of the league that despite the fact he can't grow facial hair like the rest of them, he can still fight with the rest of them.

But when it was all said and done, Philadelphia let Pittsburgh know that at least for this series, the Flyers are the best team in the Keystone State.

All it took was eight goals, an angry Peter Laviolette, and the entire city of "brotherly love" to boo the Penguins in unison.

How could one not enjoy playoff hockey?