Our Latvian hockey liaison LVHokejs does a pretty good job of keeping us posted on the doings of Dinamo Riga. When it comes to the Flyers, Dinamo Riga is pretty much to the east what the LA Kings are to the west.

But late this week, LVHokejs sent me a newsflash from Flyers East that could forever change the way these two teams look at each other from across an ocean.

Headline: "Rīgas Dinamo sastāvu papildina rezultatīvais kanādietis Žirū"

In paraphrased English: Canadian Giroux Signs with Dinamo Riga.

Wow. Holy crap. The article says it was a two-year deal he signed. And who even knew he could sign stuff with those casts on his wrists?

Some important details on this shocking acquisition after the jump.

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The big day has finally arrived. At midnight in Baku, and 3 pm on the east coast, the final of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest will begin.

And to wrap up our week of celebrating Eurovision WTFs, we thought it would be fitting to reward you all with a chance to win some BSH swag that was borne out of a Eurovision WTF. Namely our Latvian Wolf shirt, in the size of your choice, shipped right to your doorstep. All you have to do to win is crack the code that is Eurovision with a little contest.

One quick disclaimer: we're going to need to have at least 12 entries to make the contest valid, so make sure to tell everybody you know to enter so that we can fly past that minimum.

So much stuff after the jump. Rules for the contest, the running order for the final (complete with wave-y flags and a haiku about each song), and info about how to follow the show live.

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Thursday night in Europe (and 3pm on the East Coast), the second semifinal will be contested and the final 10 qualifiers to the final of Eurovision 2012 will be determined. The show doesn't actually start until midnight in Baku due to the massive time difference between Azerbaijan and the majority of Europe, so everybody will look decidedly sleepy by the time it ends.

After the jump, some quick pre-thoughts and predictions on the second semifinal and the next 10 entries our catalog of Eurovision WTFs.

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After the jump, a quick recap of Tuesday's first semifinal and the next installment of our walk down ESC WTF ST. So, so much. Next time you feel sad, I hope you remember how lucky you were in this moment.

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The wait is finally over, boys and girls. The fire is being lit. Eurovision 2012 begins today.

At 9 pm Central European Time, which is 3 pm on the East coast of the US, 18 countries will perform their entries, competing for 10 spots in the grand final on Saturday.

You can watch the show live at the official Eurovision website here, but you'll need to make sure that you have the Octoshape plug-in. Other streams are presumably available from various national broadcasters if you want something with audio commentary besides what you'll be getting in this here live thread.

After the jump, a look at the running order, some light prognostication, and your comments. And some awesome, entrancing waving flag .gifs.

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The 57th Eurovision Song Contest is taking place this week in Baku, Azerbaijan. The first semifinal is Tuesday, the second Thursday, and the final is Saturday. As the American spiritual home of Eurovision, we here at Broad Street Hockey are committed to giving you the coverage of this momentous week that you deserve.

Held every year since 1956, the contest was created as a way for European countries to battle through songwriting instead of previous methods they'd tried like doing battle through enormous wars. The success of this idea is indisputable:

You just try nitpicking at those stats, Eric.

But over its many decades Eurovision has aged into something that only slightly resembles its early incarnations. The contest is now held over three nights in stadiums and arenas that seat tens of thousands, and over a hundred million viewers make it the most watched non-sports event on television world wide.

And it's also turned into something decidedly insane. As they say, you can't spell "Eurovision" without "W-T-F."

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As you may or may not know, there are now only four teams remaining in the playoffs. While some are convinced that anything short of winning a Stanley Cup represents a failure, I would contend that making it to this final four stage constitutes an indisputably really good postseason, if not a really good entire season.

The NHL then gives these superb final four teams the worst picks in the draft, because they're socialists and that's how they roll.

But what I'm trying to say here is that making it to the final four in the playoffs is good. It's really, really good. It wasn't that special in the Original Six era when it came with making the playoffs at all, but since then it's been something really good.

So which team has been the really goodest of all time since expansion you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

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And so it ends. The Philadelphia Flyers lose to the New Jersey Devils in five games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, making it 37 years and counting without a Stanley Cup on Broad Street.

The Flyers got so thoroughly outworked, outplayed, and outcoached in this series that it was almost numbing. The Devils, a team no one saw as a real contender in this series or this season, played letter-perfect hockey for the last 11 periods of this series to absolutely obliterate the Flyers and ultimately win the series in five games. The Devils flat out embarrassed this team, and in so doing reignited a rivalry that had been pretty dead for the last decade.

After a spectacular first round series against the Penguins, the Flyers had a week to marinate in their own success juice and entered the second round soggy with hubris. After eking out a fast-paced Game 1 (the only G, The Flyers didn't get many bounces, sure, but they came nowhere near deserving to win this series, or even most any of the games in it. The four straight losses in Games 2, 3, 4 and 5 made up the Flyers first four-game losing streak of the season. Bad timing, to say the least.

Bullets will take the pain away.

• My God, that second Devils goal that Ilya Bryzgalov caused is going to live in infamy for a long, long time. And deservedly so. However, blaming this series/season on him in any way would be extremely lazy. Bryz all but stole Game 2 and adjusted better than any of his teammates from the non-hockey pace of the first round to what this series entailed. His future here could and should still be humaangous bright.
• Everyone will find someone to scapegoat for this series, and truthfully there aren't many wrong answers. No one was great, and most were varying degrees of bad. There was a lack of offense, and a lack of defense, and a lack of leadership. Everything was bad, very little was good. If you don't like ambiguous endings, you should be pretty content with how this wrapped up.
  
• How the Flyers managed to make scoring first a horrible thing in these playoffs needs to be given a lot of attention in the off-season. How does a team play a type of hockey in 11 games that makes the team that scores first go 1-10? Utterly ridiculous.
• Marty Brodeur is going to get a lot of praise over the next few days/weeks for playing for a team that has made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, but his goaltending really wasn't all that great in any point of this series. His stickhandling, however, made a huge impact, and the Flyers coaches failed miserably at working around that strength. Indeed it was the failure of this coaching staff to make any adjustments or successful motivations (from the second intermission of Game 2 on) that led to this series being so lopsided. I am calling for no one's job (except maybe whoever the strength coach is, because the Flyers got outmuscled like damn), but they've got to do better.
• Eastern Conference Finals won't include the Flyers, but it's hard to be too mad at a team that is the only one to make the second round each of the last three seasons. This organization has done so many things right during this 37-year title drought (more on that next week) that it's hard to fathom how they keep, you know, not winning.
• Handshakes after losing a series should never be a high point of the night, but seeing Claude Giroux come out in that blue suit to join the line made me smile. Good on him.

5 down...not enough. It's not happening.

Broad Street Hockey ain't going anywhere folks. Stick around all off-season for all the off-season stuff. Who knows, maybe we'll get a whole new team again!

But seriously, this will be the last game in orange for a lot of guys, doubtlessly. Each will be missed in his own way.

Go Flyers.

There has been a lot of talk about how Game 4 is a "must-win," which inevitably was followed by some sniveling about how it's not really a "must-win" game, because the Flyers can, you know, still technically lose it and win the series.

But can they? Really? In the history of the NHL, a team has led 3-1 in a best-of-seven series 229 times, and has won the series 209 times. That means that teams have only come back from 1-3 down to win the series 8.7% of the time, which is not a lot (surprisingly, no one came back from a 1-3 deficit that wasn't previously an 0-3 deficit until 1987).

Don't like history? Well then let's generously assume that the Flyers would have a 50% chance of winning each of the remaining games. Their odds of winning that coin flip three times in a row would be only 12.5%.

But if the Flyers get a "must win" win in Game 4, they'll be tied 2-2. You know how often teams that are tied 2-2 win their series? 50% of the time. That's four times as much. In other words, if the Flyers win Game 4, their odds of winning this series go up 300%. And the Flyers would have two of the remaining three games at home, to boot. Who doesn't want that? It would seem that we almost must want that, mustn't we?

In more direct terms, whatever label you do or don't want to give Game 4, you can agree on this: if they don't [must] win Game 4...they'll be fucked.

In their first game of the 2012 IIHFs, the Oskars Bartulis-led Latvians take on the Russians at 10:15 EDT, followed by the lacklusterly Latvian-less Game 4 of Rangers-Caps at 12:30.

Midday hockey--ain't nothin' like it.

This was a trap series, as dumb a concept as that seems. After upsetting their ultimate arch-rival in the Penguins in the first round, the Flyers got a week off to revel in the glory of that win. They also got to watch the remaining series as they awaited an opponent, including the Devils-Panthers series which was perhaps the lowest-quality series in the history of the NHL playoffs. When the Devils emerged as the Flyers' opponents, there was no reason for them to think it wouldn't be a Tastykakewalk to a blockbuster conference final against the Rangers.

But now the Flyers have played badly for the third game in a row and trail the Devils two games to one. Their season could well be over in two games (that's this upcoming Tuesday) if there's not a significant change. And that would be sad.

Sigh. Bullets.

• Coming off of the stinker in Game 2 the Flyers had to play better in Game 3 by default. And they did. The backcheck and breakout were way better, as was the forecheck. As was pretty much everything. This game went into overtime and the Flyers lost it on a bad line change, which just goes to show how small margins can be in the playoffs.
  
• One of the most noticeable Flyers for the third straight game was Danny Briere. After being rightly crapped on by us for his horrific Game 2, Briere came out and played real defense today at times. So, you know, you're welcome, Flyerland.
  
• The Flyers are now a ridiculous 1-4 in the playoffs when they score first (compared to 4-0 when not scoring first). You can't, you know, stop trying to score first, but I think the trend speaks to how unfortunately situational this team's level has been in these playoffs.
• The most frustrating part of this series? The Flyers haven't been able to exploit Martin Brodeur for being as slow and old as he is. Communication on the rush and in the offensive zone has been piss poor, and this team is just not getting chances. Some sort of ropes course may be in order for this two-day layoff.
  
• One has to look back some nine years to find the last time the Flyers came back from 2-1 down to win a playoff series (Toronto 2003). Oh how I don't miss Roman Cechmanek.
  
• No, the Flyers didn't play that well this game. But should they have won? It's hard to say no when they had TWO power plays on overtime (which led to absolutely dick, by the way). Pressure will be on in Game 4, which now becomes the first real must-win of the series. The last time the Flyers had a must-win was Game 6 of the first round, which was the best game this team has played. Here's hoping they respond similarly.
  

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Have at it.

Thank you, Travis, for actually letting me do this. Dreams do come true.

As you will know if you've been around here long enough, Broad Street Hockey has a special place in it's heart for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Ever since jumping on the Latvian bandwagon for the 2010 Olympics and adopting their 2008 Eurovision entry "Wolves of the Sea" as our anthem, Broad Street and Eurovision have gone together like Jeff Carter and Mike Richards. Nothing will ever tear us apart, so don't bother trying.

Confused? Once you watch this aforementioned slice of Eurovision bliss, you'll understand (or you'll be far, far more confused).

If that was Eurovision in 2008, just imagine what 2012 has in store! Actually, don't imagine, just keep reading and I'll show you.

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SO THAT HAPPENED. We finally have another team in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. And it's somehow the Washington Capitals.

Undecided on how you feel about that? Let's flashback to my initial scenarios post:

This is where you'll start to see how much you should be rooting for the Capitals right now. Unlike the Senators, the Capitals would actually seem to have a chance to pull off the first round upset, AND they also match up well against the Rangers in their recent history, so they could do a lot of the Flyers' dirty work for them without ever seeming like a real threat to beat the Flyers in the Conference Finals (Montreal 2010, anyone?).

The Caps winning was huge for this team's prospects in the next round. They not only took the Bruins out of the playoffs altogether, they become a worse-seeded team than the Flyers in the second round, meaning that they will face a higher ranked opponent than we will. Like, for example, the Rangers, who the Flyers can no longer face before the conference finals.

For a full TEN DAYS after the Flyers went up 3-0 and all but guaranteed themselves a spot in the second round, the Flyers could have still played any of the other six teams alive in the East. That number of teams has finally shrunk from six all the way to...four. It's a start. Depending on how tonight's two Game 7s play out, here's what could still happen:

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2-7 -- The Flyers record in the next series after winning a series 4-2.

In their history the Flyers have won a best-of-seven series by the score of four-games-to-two 12 times. Two of these wins were fairly memorable, coming in the 1974 and 1975 Stanley Cup Finals. These wins were followed by parades.

But 10 times, the 4-2 wins came before the final round, so they were followed by another series. And those series haven't gone so well, so far.

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Ed Note: Updated for reality, bumped for relevance. Flyers are in the second round, bitches.

As a team in the No. 4 vs. No. 5 match-up, the Flyers are in the unique position of being able to play any of the other six remaining East teams in the second round. No other match-up allows for this.

There are eight possible scenarios that could play out in the rest of the first round. Here they all are, and how they affect the Flyers' likely second round match-up.

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Eastern Quarterfinals, Game 6 -- Flyers win series, 4-2
[Complete Coverage] - [Pittsburgh Reaction] - [Discussion Thread]
[Event Summary] - [PBP Log] - [TOI Log] - [Faceoff Report]
[Shift Charts] - [Head-to-Head TOI] - [Shot Differential] - [5-on-5 Faceoffs]

Damn that felt good.

After sputtering a bit with victory on the menu in Games 4 and 5, the Flyers won Game 6 convincingly by the score of 5-1, dumping out the Penguins in 6, avenging playoff losses in 2008 and 2009, and becoming the first Eastern Conference team to advance to the second round. It was a lot of good stuff.

They say teams don't come back from down 0-3 for a reason. Because they don't. Just because 2010 happened doesn't mean it happens, ya know? The Flyers only had to beat the Penguins in one of Games 4, 5, 6, or 7, and they did. It might not have been pretty, but it happened. The Flyers won, the Penguins lost, all is well.

Bullets over Broad Street:

• Noon? Seriously NHL? For a game that started at practically the ass crack of dawn, the Flyers delivered a seriously primetime performance. Claude Giroux decked Sidney Crosby then scored the first goal, and it was actually a good thing for once. Then Hartnell scored, then Erik Gustafsson burned Flower like incense. That was pretty much all it took.
• Afternoon games are never my favorite, but the Flyers won both of them in this series easily. So maybe I should be okay with them. But still, noon?
• How good is Erik Gustafsson? Answer: very (would have also accepted "really" or "super"). The Flyer rookies have gotten a lot of ink this playoffs/season, but Gustafsson hasn't had much of any and his contribution has been huge. This Swedish hoss was on the ice for 22:09 today, which was FOURTH on the team behind only Braydon Coburn, Matt Carle, and Claude Giroux. That is crazy for a rookie who was a healthy scratch for most of this series.

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