After an offseason filled with hope and hype, the Philadelphia Flyers could not have suffered through a more nightmarish loss to start their 2026-27 season if they tried.
On Wednesday night, the archrival Pittsburgh Penguins marched into Xfinity Mobile Arena and smashed the Flyers, winning by an eye-watering 7-0 margin. Nick Robertson opened the scoring with a redirection, and Ville Koivunen doubled the Penguins' lead to 2-0 on a breakaway, taking advantage of a poor line change from the Flyers.
After getting out-shot 11-5 in the first period and trailing 2-0, the hope was that the Flyers would respond in a meaningful fashion in the second period, but things just snowballed from there.
An exasperated Rick Tocchet said after the game that he didn't know if the Flyers won a battle, and the effort and score reflected that assessment.
Evgeni Malkin, Filip Hallander, and Hendrix Lapierre all scored for the Penguins in the span of 5:20 to put the Penguins up 5-0, and the Flyers carrying a 26-12 shots on goal deficit.
"That's a team that didn't want to be engaged," Tocchet said of the Flyers. "As much defensively as offensively."
Discipline was an issue for the Flyers, too, as Porter Martone, Nick Seeler, and Travis Konecny all took needless penalties starting their own altercations unprovoked.
Ultimately, the Penguins were 2-for-4 on the power play while also scoring shorthanded, and the Flyers went 0-for-3. On paper, that's hardly the difference in a 7-0 loss, but the Flyers failed to build and maintain any momentum, and special teams once again were a piece of that equation.
By the time Robertson and Egor Chinakhov scored the sixth and seventh goals for the Penguins, the Flyers already looked wholly disinterested in finishing out the game, and they looked very much like the team that got smoked 5-1 by the Washington Capitals' prospects and depth AHLers in the preseason finale.
After the game, Flyers captains Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, and Travis Sanheim resisted definitively answering questions about complacency and preparedness, though after an abhorrent effort such as the one put forth Wednesday night at a home opener, it's fair to wonder.
"Once we're out there, we gotta bring a compete level a lot higher, win more one-on-one battles, and not rely on our skill," Couturier said. "We know we got talent in this locker room, but [if] we're not gonna win battles and support each other, that talent's not gonna bring us too far."
"I don't have an answer," Tocchet said matter-of-factly. "They out-coached us tonight, they out-played us, they did everything better than us tonight."
Sanheim was quick to point out that the Flyers play again on Thursday night, representing an opportunity to flush this one straight away.
"We got a game tomorrow night. We can bounce back and forget about this, and if we do that, everyone won't remember," Sanheim assessed.
The Flyers' next opponents will be the New Jersey Devils, who have their home opener at 7 p.m. on Thursday night.
That's a faster, more skilled team that won't be banged up like the Penguins, who were without Ben Kindel, Bryan Rust, and Andrei Kuzmenko (personal) on Wednesday night.
"If we play like this tomorrow with a team like Jersey, it's going to be even worse, so we got to be careful," Tocchet said.
