Sidney Crosby Is the Flyers' Daddy

It's getting harder and harder to put into words some of the things that Sidney Crosby can do on a hockey rink.

The Pittsburgh captain, Evgeni Malkin, and the Penguins seamlessly carried over their cold-blooded domination of the Flyers from the regular season right into the playoffs with a surgical 7-0 win in Game 1 on Wednesday.

Crosby and Co. sharpened up the proverbial scalpels and went for the jugular straight out of the gate, putting five big ones past goaltender Brian Elliott before this professional ice hockey match was even halfway through, chasing the shaky netminder in favour of the newly-acquired Petr Mrazek who did not look much better.

The nail in Elliott's coffin was this absurd backhand swat goal by Crosby, for which I have no words.

OK, maybe I have a few words: that shit is insane and there's likely no one on the planet besides Crosby who can pull that off. We've seen goals batted out of the air before, but the physics of this one are something to behold. With his back facing the net and the shot coming from the point, Sid had to time the puck's path to the net, connect with it in mid-air with the backhand of his stick blade, and deflect it over the shoulder of Elliott and into the net without looking. It doesn't even make sense, tbh. Even more crazy, this was the THIRD highlight real swat-out-of-the-air tally that Crosby has delivered this season which is, essentially, three more than anyone else.

He wasn't even done there, as ball caps rained down on the ice after Crosby, the assassin that he is, added two more tallies to complete a natural hat trick against the rival Flyers—one Pittsburgh has laid the boots to all year, going 4-0 against Philly this season and scoring five goals in every single game. Crosby put up nine points in those four contests, the most any player totalled against the Flyers this season.

After each Game 1 goal, Crosby, the heartless hockey robot that he is, barely lifted his arms and showed only a brief, faint smile. The dude is cold.

Malkin, meanwhile, one of the other murderers the Penguins boast in their stacked group of forwards, was not to be outdone by his fellow future Hall of Famer, as he went vintage Geno with an electric end-to-end effort before stealing Elliott's soul with this nasty backhand.

The two Philly slayers made the entire Flyers squad look like a bunch of peewee players all night long, taking as much space as they wanted and owning both the perimeters and the front of the Flyers net with ease. The duo combined for four goals and seven shots on goal in Game 1 as the Penguins set the tone and began their quest to become the first team since the 80s to win three straight Stanley Cups.

From a Flyers standpoint, the answer to the question "Who's your daddy?" has never been more clear. They have two daddies, actually, and they are named Sid and Geno and they reside in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.