NHL Playoffs 2012: Inexperience Won't Keep Flyers from Stanley Cup Finals Berth

Watching the Philadelphia Flyers in this year's postseason has been a compelling dissertation on how inexperience, talent and poise interact on a young roster.

And the Philadelphia Flyers are most certainly young. Sean Couturier is 19 years old, and Brayden Schenn is 20. James van Riemsdyk, Eric Wellwood and Jakub Voracek are 22. Wayne Simmonds is 23. Hell, the team's leader and one of the NHL's best players, Claude Giroux, is 24.

And they've played inexperienced at times, that much is for certain.

They've had the bad habit of starting slowly in this year's playoffs. They can look like a different team from one period to the next. They have the habit of allowing momentum to build against them, which they did in the third period against the New Jersey Devils in Game 2.

But for all of the inexperience they show, they have enough veteran presence and, more importantly, enough talent to overcome the inconsistency.

The Flyers have so much offensive talent and so much depth they come at opponents in wave after wave. When they are busy on the forecheck and the passing is crisp, they're nearly impossible to keep out of the net.

Couturier, Schenn, van Riemsdyk, Wellwood, Simmonds and Voracek often play beyond their years. It's almost as if they don't know they're supposed to be able to compete at this level yet—they don't realize that they aren't supposed to have such poise at such a young age.

And that's the thing—they may be inexperienced, but when the chips are down, they don't lose their cool.

Against the Pittsburgh Penguins, in a series that got incredibly chippy and downright ugly in Game 3, the young Flyers didn't lose their cool, didn't unnecessarily lash out, didn't allow the Penguins to get in their heads.

It's why, in a series most of the pundits predicted them to lose, the young Flyers won.

Sometimes a team just feels like they've got magic come the postseason—as though the very aura around them changes. Maybe they're just clicking at that time or confidence is high, I don't know what it is.

But the Flyers have that right now. The Los Angeles Kings have that right now.

Don't let a Game 2 loss to the Devils fool you. The Flyers settled into a comfort zone and New Jersey made them pay. Don't be surprised if the Flyers come back in this series with a bang.

That's the thing about this Flyers team. They're inexperienced enough to fall into a lull and lose a game because of it, but they're also too talented and poised to make the same mistake for long.

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