The Flyers held the edge early on a first period power play goal by Bobby Clarke, but soon the Leafs came back. McDonald scored twice and Salming added a power play goals, and though Reggie Leach (my favorite) added one for the Flyers, the second period ended with the Leafs ahead. In the third, the Leafs pulled further ahead, with the phenomenal McDonald scoring in the sixth minute and again in the twelfth. Down now 5 to 2, the Flyers became unhinged, and veterans Gary Dornhoeffer and Ross Lonsberry took cheap, nasty penalties. With seven minutes left, the Flyers looked a way that they seldom looked–discouraged, frustrated, beaten.

Then the amazement began. A suddenly roused Flyers began a relentless attack. Clunky Mel Bridgman, never a big scorer, put one past Palmateer at 14:11. Not sucha big deal, but the Flyers kept fighting. At 18:11, Tom Bladon, the defenseman with the heavy slap shot, scored from the point. A mere sixteen seconds later, the indomitable Clarke poked one from a scramble in front of the net, and the Flyers had tied the score.

The overtime period was terribly tense, end to end action with each side taking eight shots. The Flyers even had to kill a penalty when Bob Kelly went off for tripping. But with the period almost over, Leach and MacLeish broke down the right wing, and from the right circle, Leach blasted a shot past Palmateer. Incredible.

The Flyers took the next two games and the series, before losing, alas, to the Bruins in the semi-finals. We were sorry not to have our rematch with Montreal, but for 35 years, we have had the amazing Game Four, and the overtime blast by The Rifle.

In a statement he posted on Facebook, Thomas was plain about his decision. “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.” Thomas has been tut-tutted by such political philosophers like Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, who on ESPN played establishmentarian court jesters, saying that when one has been invited by the President, one ought to go, out of respect for the office.

Nonsense. First, this has nothing to do with the country. President Obama is merely copying a move pioneered by John Lindsay, who in the midst of tight mayoral race in New York City in 1969, barged into the locker room of the World Series-winning Mets and inserted his head under waterfalls of champagne. (The ploy worked; he won a narrow plurality in a three-way race.) President Nixon soon began rewarding winning coaches with congratulatory phone calls. Now it’s receptions. Clearly these are held as publicity opportunities for the incumbent, and I have no problem with Tim Thomas or any of these other jocks exercising his right to absent himself. The White House is such a bubble, it’s good when this or any president hears some disagreement.

Indeed, I wish it was plainer why the 277 would-be honorees in Britain declined their invitations; no reasons were cited, and the Palace took care in its response to a BBC request to release only the names of people who are dead. Over the years, explanations have been provided by some people who are not on the list. According to the New York Times, the writer J. G. Ballard said he did not want to be named a Commander of the British Empire because the whole thing was a “preposterous charade.” The poet Benjamin Zephaniah (left) refused membership in the Order of the British Empire, saying “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen.” David Bowie declined a C.B.E. in 2000, saying “I seriously don’t know what it’s for.” (Selling records, duh!) In 1992, Doris Lessing declined a knighthood, saying “Surely there is something unlikable about a person, when old, accepting honors from a institution she attacked when young?” But eight years later, she accepted another title, the Companion of Honor, saying she liked that “you’re not called anything” special.

And that’s the point–we don’t know if these folks were trying to raise an objection, or to avoid being used as a monarchical prop, or simply because they were holding out for a better honor. After all, Alfred Hitchcock turned down a C.B.E. in 1962, then later accepted being named a Knight Commander of the British Empire. But I like what Terence Blacker wrote in the Independent. Noting that the opt-outs “have little in common politically or personally beyond the fact that their work is the product of uncompromising individuality,” Blacker suggests that “Simply by accepting a bauble of thanks from the nation, they would be sacrificing what was best about them – their apartness. Once they became part of the national community, their voice, their eyes, their strength would be changed. They neither accepted the honour nor, in what has become a new form of boasting, told the world that they had rejected it.”

It’s a little cynical to say that this should be the guiding precept for whether or not America goes to war, but in my lifetime, the wars that have been most damaging to American interests are the wars we have not won. I do not believe that we should have gone to war in Iraq, but neither can I tell you that no good has come from it. But what seems indisputably clear is that everything bad that happened took place because we did not go in and win that war. Instead, we toppled the government, then tried to conduct a bargain-basement occupation while chaos reigned. When did good things begin to happen? Only when the surge secured a victory, and it is to the eternal shame of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest of that claque that they so utterly failed to do that until months of disaster went by. We have now begun our tenth year of war in Afghanistan, and there is no end in sight, mostly because we do not know what the end looks like. We might have won the war when we overhrew the Taliban, but instead we switched over to Iraq, and failed to win the war. Now we do not know why we are there; we cannot say what we needs to be achieved before we can declare victory and come home. As a result, we are wasting blood and treasure, and President Obama should be embarrassed that he perpetuates the condition.

Lao Tzo is insightful, Clauswitz is shrewd, but no military thinker has ever bested Al Davis’ three little words.

Just win, baby. If you can’t, or won’t, then don’t.