Inside the Flyers: Flyers cite home advantage for Game 6

There is loud, and then there is EARSPLITTING LOUD.

Pittsburgh Penguins fans were the latter Friday night, shaking the Consol Energy Center during their team's 3-2, stay-alive win over the Flyers.

It was the loudest an arena has been for a Flyers game, home or away, this season.

The Penguins won because goalie Marc-Andre Fleury was spectacular, but don't underestimate the fans' impact.

"They gave us energy," center Jordan Staal said after scoring a key goal in the Penguins' second straight win, which sliced the Flyers' dwindling series lead to three games to two.

On Sunday, with the series shifting back to the Wells Fargo Center, Flyers fans will try to return the favor.

Tweeted center Claude Giroux: "Place is going to be wild. Let's get this one done boys!! #loudestfans"

Home teams have struggled in the NHL playoffs this season, going 13-21 entering Saturday. In this series, the Flyers are 1-1 at home, 2-1 on the road.

"Road-ice advantage," winger Jaromir Jagr called it before the series, knowing his team played better in enemy arenas during the regular season.

To a man, however, the Flyers say it is a huge advantage to play at home at this stage of a series. Based on that logic, if they don't close it out on Sunday, the advantage would go to the Penguins for Game 7 on Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

"We're treating this as a do-or-die game," Giroux said during a news conference Saturday at the Flyers' training facility in Voorhees.

Giroux said the Wells Fargo Center fans were "the loudest since I've been here" in Games 3 and 4, "and I'm not expecting anything less in Game 6. They're crazy fans and loud, and hopefully we can build off that."

Though statistics this season say otherwise, Giroux and his teammates claim playing at the Wells Fargo Center makes a difference.

"When you play at home, you're more comfortable," Giroux said. "When you play more games at one rink, you know the boards a little bit better. I know it's a fine detail, but at the end of the day, it does matter. We need to build off our fans early on and have a good first period."

Defenseman Matt Carle said the Flyers "feed off our crowd. The intensity they bring into our building is second to none."

The Penguins will not be intimidated playing in Philly. Not after a 10-goal eruption - equaling the most goals allowed by the Flyers in a playoff game in franchise history - in their last visit.

Road teams keep it simple, Penguins winger Pascal Dupuis suggested.

"You don't feel like you have to please anybody or shoot when the crowd tells you to," he said.

The Wells Fargo Center will be a sea of orange Sunday afternoon as Lauren Hart, joined by the late Kate Smith in a video, perform a goose-bump-raising duet of "God Bless America" - in what has become Philadelphia's proudest sports tradition.

"We're going to definitely need the fans to be 100 percent in our corner," winger Scott Hartnell said, "and no matter what happens, to be cheering for us right to the end and believe that we can win."

Right now, the Penguins also have that belief. That comes from winning the last two games, including the 10-3 rout Wednesday at the Wells Fargo Center that sent most of the fans to an early exit.

"It's time for our defensemen and our goalie to win us a game," Hartnell said. "You need a goalie who can make those stops. Not that Bryz [Ilya Bryzgalov] has played bad, but we'd love to win, 1-0, and get a shutout and move on and get some rest and get some guys healthy."

Given the fact that the Penguins have the league's most vaunted attack - and that since the Flyers started in 1967-68, they have had only four 1-0 playoff wins at home - that outcome is a long shot.

At this point, coach Peter Laviolette doesn't care whether it's a goalies' duel or, like most of the games in this series, a shootout. All he wants is that tough-to-secure fourth win.

"We need to win a game. If it's 8-5, it's 8-5," he said. "If it's 1-0, it's 1-0. I don't really care how we win it. I want to win a game. It's irrelevant how it happens."

Let the noise begin.