Gary Bettman.

BY MARK SPECTOR
sportsnet.ca

PHILADELPHIA — When they start bringing big Stanley into the building, everything changes. There is something intrinsically different about a hockey player’s day when he awakes knowing that before he goes to bed that night, he could be a Stanley Cup champion.

So they try and pretend it’s just another game.

Good luck with that, Tomas Kopecky.

"I'm just going to prepare the same way I prepare for every other game, and maybe pay a little bit more attention to the details," Kopecky said. "You can't look ahead way too much in front of you. Just focus on the little things and the little battles. That's when the big things are going to come."

Not so fast, say the Flyers. It is their last home game of the year, regardless of the outcome. Watching the Hawks dance the Cup around Wachovia Center isn’t something Jeff Carter pictured when he set out on this mission.

"You never want to see a team come into your building beat you, let alone win the Stanley Cup on your home ice," he said. "Obviously, the fans have been behind us since we began this five years ago, really. It would be nice to come out and get a big win for them in the last home game."

•••

Fair to Middling

Even Philadelphia winger Ville Leino, a teammate of Mike Leighton and a buddy of fellow Finn Antti Niemi, will admit that the goaltending in this series has not been very memorable.

"Both goalies have been pretty much the same," Leino said. "They’ve been a little shaky, but still they’ve been playing OK. I don’t think the goalie has mattered so far. We scored four goals last game — you should win a hockey game with four goals, especially in the final."

Leighton gets the start in Game 6 for Philly, as expected. It’s not like the Flyers have much of a choice, even though he’s been yanked twice in the final, in Game 1 and 5.

"There’s a lot of speed and a lot of offence," he said of the series. "We have four lines that can score and they have four lines that can score. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good defence you’re playing, guys are going to make good plays and score goals. It’s not like New Jersey, where they try to play a shutdown system and win 1-0. It’s a good quick series."

•••

Devil in Details

John Madden won a Cup with New Jersey, and now he finds himself as the fourth-line den mother to a group of young Blackhawks who are learning how to win. When he was a kid in New Jersey, Madden learned the same thing from guys like Scott Stevens, Ken Daneyko and Randy McKay.

"I think I'm still feeling my way around," he said Tuesday. "There's so much leadership in the room. The guys are young, but way beyond their years in terms of the way they handle themselves. Speaking from Jonathan Toews and Dunks (Duncan Keith) and Sharpy (Patrick Sharp), those guys are our captains. (Keith) Seabrook as well. There are lots of leaders in the room that do a lot of things. It's been easy to come in and play hockey and not worry about all the other things that go on.

How often does he stand up to speak?

"I tend to say things in the dressing room when things aren't going so well," Madden said. "So I've had very little to say this year."

•••

Forget it, pal.

While media and fans go on endlessly about a Flyers team that, like Freddie Krueger, seems impossible to finally lay to rest, they won’t be dwelling on that inside the Philadelphia dressing room prior to Game 6.

"(Boston) was last series. We’re not going to dwell in the past," said defenceman Braydon Coburn, who won’t even take solace in the fact that last year Pittsburgh did exactly what the Flyers are hoping to do here — win Games 6 and 7.

"We don’t draw from the past, other teams in different situations," Coburn said. "We’re not going to sit back and say, ‘Detroit did it, we did it. It’s going to be easy.’ It’s not.

"In here, we’re just worried about the job at hand. It’s winning Game 6 in our building, and coming out with a better effort than Game 5."