We don’t know how many times we have to repeat this: Don’t make the Smurfs angry. Athens came out hitting in front of their home crowd on Tuesday, wore out a path to the penalty box and ended up paying dearly in the end. They now trail 3-0 in the series and Berlin looks primed to advance to the Southern Conference finals. After a scoreless 60 minutes of play – Jimmy Howard of Berlin stopped 26 shots and Athens’ Cam Ward stopped 21 – the first overtime period began. Berlin went into a blue frenzy, fired 4 shots on Ward, allowed none by the Greeks and Ryan Callahan, the Berlin team captain ended it with a partial breakaway goal. Assisting on the play was Logan Couture, the league’s leading scorer in the playoffs. The truth is those two Smurfs have been the main reason the Smurfs are where they are today.  The two lead the team in scoring with 14 and 12 points after putting together 30-plus goal seasons. Their linemate, Loui Eriksson is third in playoff scoring but he’s a fairly distant 5 points behind Callahan.  A significant moment in Tuesday’s game occurred with about 3 minutes left in the second period when poor Vadim Shipachyov was blasted into the side boards by Berlin blueliner Josh Gorges. The lithe 20-year-old Shipachyov crumpled to the ice and couldn’t get up without assistance. The Russian center only has 4 points in the playoffs, but before the series was dubbed “Smurf Killer” by the Greek media. Privately, Smurf players said they didn’t approve of the marketing campaign, nor the nickname, and some vowed to knock Shipachyov down a few pegs. No one, including Gorges, would link the marketing effort to the check that injured the Greek forward. Game 4: Athens is basically fighting with three hands tied behind their backs at this point. Shipachyov joins right wings Jason Pominville and T. J. Oshie on the disabled list and Athens coach John Tortorella has few options available as replacements. He moved Ryan O’Reilly from center into Pominville’s spot on the top line for Tuesday’s game and will probably call up Dominic Moore, who hasn’t played a game for the Greeks since he appeared in 13 games during Season 2.

Bratislava Eagles fans were forced to watch a severe beating administered by Paris on Tuesday. The only thing missing in the 6-1 pounding was the guillotine the Rouges Eiffels left back in Paris a couple hundred years ago.  The shots on goal total was Paris 41, Bratislava 11. The Eagles never got off more than 4 shots in any period. The third game was more subdued than the previous two, as Patrick Kaleta and Antoine Roussel sat for all but 6 minutes of the contest. Paris took advantage of their absence by pounding Bratislava players with hits, winning that battle 27-18. Two Russian forwards caused the most problems for Eagle goalie Craig Anderson. Evgeny Malkin and Alex Semin each scored a goal and they combined for 12 shots. The french team also had goals from three defensemen: Kris Letang, Travis Hamonic and Ossi Vaananen. Most telling was the fact that Bratislava’s number one line of Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa nd Martin Erat was held to just 2 shots. Game 4: Bratislava is only a .500 team at home, and they lost the first home game of the series Tuesday. So logic says they will win the next one to keep it even right?  Maybe if they were playing a team lower in the standings, but it says Paris on the schedule.  The Eagles’ only hope is to coax Paris into taking penalties.  But even then, they will be going against penalty killing units that have successfully killed off a league-leading 94.3 percent of opponents’ powerplays in these playoffs. In fact, in Tuesday’s game, the first two goals of the game were both shorthanded goals, scored by Paris’ Drew Miller and Letang.