When the Vancouver Canucks fell to the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday night, they plummeted into a 3-0 series hole that seems impossible to climb out of. It's not that the President's Trophy winners can't pull off the miraculous feat, but the chances of it happening are absolutely slim-to-none. It's only happened three times in hockey history.

But the Canucks are at least going down with dignity. Sure, they might dive and they might complain to the officials after the game has already been decided, like Alex Burrows did immediately after the final horn at Staples Center following Game 3, but they're keeping their cool about them. They aren't turning the game into a joke.

The same cannot be said for the Pittsburgh Penguins. In their Game 3 loss in Philadelphia on Sunday, the Penguins sullied their reputation as a team and an organization that does things the right way and handles itself with class. The golden boy image of their superstar, Sidney Crosby, was perhaps irreversibly damaged, and the way the team behaved turned their Hall of Fame owner into an outright hypocrite.

We'll get the disclaimer out of the way right near the top, by the way: I'm a Philadelphia Flyers fan. I grew up hating all things Pittsburgh Penguins, and I still hate all things Pittsburgh Penguins. But while hating the Pens, I begrudgingly respected them. I respected the hell of out them, in fact, not only because they've won two Stanley Cups far more recently than my team has, but that in winning their third Stanley Cup in 2009, they acted with the dignity and class we've come to expect from the organization.

I can't say I woke up Monday morning feeling the same way. Not off an afternoon that saw Arron Asham throw cross-checks at the neck of Brayden Schenn after Schenn threw a clean hit on Matt Cooke. (You might say it's a two-minute charging minor. I won't argue with you. It doesn't warrant that response -- or frankly any response -- from Asham.)

Not off an afternoon that saw James Neal take a run at two of Philadelphia's most important players. Not accidental, either. Two blatant runs at Sean Couturier and Claude Giroux, back to back on the same shift.

Neal wasn't penalized for the hit on Couturier, and as he stayed on the ice for the offensive zone faceoff immediately after Couturier made his way to the locker room for observation, he gave it just a few seconds before taking an even more egregious run at Flyers superstar Claude Giroux.

The hit clearly left Giroux woozy. Scary woozy, in fact. That didn't look good at all, but he did remain in the game and seemed fine when talking to reporters afterwards.

The on-ice actions of these Pens didn't stop here. After the Giroux hit, Scott Hartnell and Wayne Simmonds attempted to confront Neal for going after their star, as they absolutely should have. There was no penalty on the Couturier hit -- a complete injustice by the officials -- and there was only a two-minute charging minor handed out for the attempt on Giroux, despite the rather obvious intent to injure.

When Neal stepped off the bench to skate to the penalty box, that was the chance for the Flyers to take justice into their own hands a bit, because at that stage it was clear the work of the officials would not suffice. Sidney Crosby then grabbed Hartnell from behind to keep him from getting at Neal, and then Craig Adams decided to beat the hell out of Hartnell for some reason that's yet to be explained.

If you didn't think the Penguins had come completely unhinged in the first period of Game 3, you couldn't help but realize it by the third period. They were playing awful hockey so far in this series -- atrocious defense, poor goaltending, the inability to hold a lead of any shape -- but this was an entirely different thing. They were losing, but they still had their dignity. In 60 minutes of hockey Sunday afternoon, they completely lost it all.

That wasn't the end of it, however. Once in the locker room with microphones and cameras in their faces, the Penguins simply couldn't stop embarrassing themselves. First, there's Neal talking about his hit on Couturier. (Shockingly, in Neal's eight-question session with reporters at Wells Fargo Center, not a single person asked him about his run at Giroux.)

"I didn't even mean to hit him. I don't even know if the puck was at his feet or not or where it was. I think we just chipped it. I let up as much as I could and it is what it is."

Yeah, um. Go scroll up and watch that video again. It doesn't take a polygraph to realize how poorly Neal is lying. He's trying to avoid a suspension,