Colorado wanted to win a Cup. Had all the pieces in place except the most important. So the Avs traded for Patrick Roy, and a few months later Denver was holding a parade.

	Roman Cechmanek Goaltender Philadelphia Flyers Profile
	2001-2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM W L T SV% GAA 44 23 12 6 .920 2.10

Detroit reached the conclusion that it couldn't win again unless it upgraded its goaltending, even with a group of players that could comprise the best team in the league. So Chris Osgood went packing and Dominik Hasek arrived and once more the Wings have locked up a President's Trophy and are a Cup favorite.

The New Jersey Devils aren't carrying the 'favorite' tag anymore, but they do have Martin Brodeur, who swears he has one good ride left in him. And the upstart New York Islanders, despite their huge deals at the draft, didn't really believe they were a playoff team until they talked Detroit into giving them Osgood at the end of training camp.

	Brian Boucher Goaltender Philadelphia Flyers Profile
	2001-2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM W L T SV% GAA 40 18 15 4 .904 2.42

Sure, the Wings and Avs are the top two teams in the West; the Devils and Islanders East teams with low seedings but high hopes. But all four share something in common: Their goalies have won championships.

Meanwhile, Toronto is holding onto the hope that Curtis Joseph -- generally considered the best goaltender to never have won a Cup -- will return healthy and lucky. If he's there, the Maple Leafs have a chance. And in Boston, confidence is high that the Bruins are talented enough to allow Byron Dafoe a chance to prove he can be part of the postseason goaltending elite.

Then there's the Flyers, a team with more depth than those other Eastern contenders, and a payroll that surpasses even those superior Western teams.

But in Philadelphia, a city that brought you alternating goaltenders on the way to the Stanley Cup finals in 1997, there is no goalie with a ring. In fact, there isn't even a goalie with a starting playoff mandate.

"We'll make the call here as we go on," Flyers coach Bill Barber said. "I'm open-minded about it. We've got three games to stabilize our little bumps, and that includes (Roman) Cechmanek. We've got to get this settled down here."

What's to settle? Well, in their last seven games, the Flyers lost five in a row, then barely beat a Penguins team with eight regulars on the injured list, then came from ahead to tie a Florida team starting seven rookies.

How's that for a roll heading into the playoffs?

"Some nights your goaltender wins you some games and keeps you in games you shouldn't be in," said Keith Primeau. "Other nights your offense is there, you're scoring goals and yet you can't keep anything out of your net. That's why it's a team sport. That's why it was a team tie (against Florida)."

Anything less than an impressive victory in the Meadowlands over the Devils Wednesday night, however, and the Flyers will be stuck in a bad position one week prior to the start of the playoffs. And stuck with a goalie in Cechmanek who doesn't have the confidence of his teammates.

This is not good news, considering the belief that player acquisitions that have boosted the payroll level into the mid-$50 million range were only made possible when club president Bob Clarke convinced his corporate masters that doing so would prevent another early playoff ouster.

By the way, upgrading the goaltending wasn't part of that offseason agenda.

This team that Clarke has renovated a couple of times over -- including the removal of a concussed joist by the name of Eric Lindros -- has been constructed from the forwards on down, rather than rebuilt from the goal on out. How appropriate, then, that it has spent the stretch drive suffering several levels of meltdown.

Jeremy Roenick gets hurt, so suddenly Simon Gagne can't score. Adam Oates is acquired in a trade, but suddenly he can't play when he gets on a line with John LeClair and Mark Recchi, both of whom spent the winter on a one-goal-per-10 games pace.

When they finally start scoring, a defense hurt by Eric Desjardins' injury-spurred decline starts falling apart. NHL teams like Florida, which barely qualifies for that title, suddenly find no difficulty roaming through the Flyers' defensive zone.

That plays into the poor goaltending the team has been receiving, though so did one key coaching decision by Barber -- he made Brian Boucher a backup again, just when he had started to look like a starting goaltender again.

This is because Cechmanek, last season's runner-up to Hasek in the Vezina voting who looked like a poor Hasek imitation as the Sabres were wiping out the Flyers in the first round last spring, was handed the keys to the crease right after coming off the injured list. Three games later, it seems Cechmanek is still suffering from the effects of a high ankle sprain, along with a clear case of confidence drain.

Cechmanek was so bad in the tie with the Panthers that, after allowing a third goal on a Sandis Ozolinsh drive that seemed to go right through him, Cechmanek literally skated out to the blue line and forlornly looked toward the Flyers bench.

Did several winks through his mask signal SOS?

"No," Cechmanek said.

But that didn't gibe with what at least one witnessing teammate said about the incident. That version had Cechmanek trying to tell Barber that he'd come out of the game if the coach wanted him to. But after Barber ignored him and that same veteran teammate suggested rather strongly that Cechmanek get back in his crease, the goalie returned to the scene of the crime ... and allowed another unseemly goal with 16.6 seconds left in regulation.

	“	If you look at last year he was the reason we made the playoffs at all. He was the best goaltender in the league last year. ... So what am I supposed to do now, shove him aside? I've got to give this guy a chance. ”
		— Flyers coach Bill Barber, on goalie Roman Cechmanek

With three games left in the regular season, is this the confident goalie you want going for you in the playoffs? Or does Barber have another plan?

"If you look at last year he was the reason we made the playoffs at all," Barber said of Cechmanek. "He was the best goaltender in the league last year. He played better than Hasek (in the regular season). Yeah, we got beat out by Buffalo, but playoffs are a learning experience. I'm telling you head-to-head during the regular year that he was the best goaltender in the league. So what am I supposed to do now, shove him aside? I've got to give this guy a chance."

Talent and years of championship experience are what those Western title twins draw energy from. Drawing confidence from their goaltenders is why they've won Stanley Cups. For the Flyers, there is no such choice, which might be why Barber hasn't officially announced one.

"I know I'm not one of his favorites," Boucher said in a brief but honest assessment of his relationship with Barber. "But I can't sit and worry about it or try to figure it out. I can say I'm 25 and I'll get my chance. But if he's made a decision already, I can understand why he has to stick with it now."

Everyone around the team knows Barber's choice will be Cechmanek, a veteran of the Czech hockey wars who was a sixth-round draft choice in 2000 and wound up stealing Boucher's starting job and winning a long-term contract. What the 32-year-old Cechmanek hasn't done is win a playoff series, which is why, despite their acquired free agent and trading deadline prizes, many observers refuse to rank the Flyers as a top Cup contender.

Confidence is a funny thing. But when it's lacking all through a roster -- with forwards having difficulty scoring and defensemen who can't keep their zone clear and a goalie looking for a way out -- it gets to be pretty serious.

"Confidence from a goalie? Do you really believe Detroit could win without it? Or Colorado could win without it? They do that because they have the two best goaltenders in the league," Barber said. "Is Detroit that much better than anybody else? No. But they have Dominik Hasek. And Colorado has all their big guns ... but in the finals Roy stumbled over a puck and cost them a game. But then he came back and won them a Cup."

The Cechmanek choice is what Barber hangs his hopes on. That and a team full of high-priced forwards who can't seem to get on any kind of consistent roll.

Even they know that the only way this Flyers team is going to beat anybody in the postseason is by outscoring people. Yes, they are still ranked near the top in that all-important category of goals-against. But their defensive corps is weary and the goalie lacks confidence and it hasn't helped that all those high-priced people up front keep turning the puck over in the middle of the ice.

Sure, the weak East presents an open-door route to the finals for a Flyers team that on paper still looks deeper than the rest. But Stanley Cups aren't qualified for on paper, they're achieved in goal.

Isn't that what everyone else believes?

Rob Parent of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.