Flyers hope to rebound vs. Devils after having a ‘wake-up call’ in the season opener
Thursday’s game in New Jersey can be a clean slate for the Flyers, following a 7-0 loss to Pittsburgh.
NEWARK, N.J. — The Flyers spent the offseason preaching that the group needed to avoid growing complacent.
General manager Danny Briére said that it “keeps [him] up at night,” thinking about the group getting too confident and taking a step back. After the Flyers’ ugly 7-0 loss to the Penguins in the season opener at home, captain Sean Couturier said the same thing: This year’s team is not last year’s team. “We’ve got to realize that we’re not that good,” he said.
Having a shortened training camp could have favored the Flyers, since they didn’t make many new additions this offseason. All but two members of the opening night roster played in the playoffs last year.
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But instead, the Flyers suffered their worst home opener loss since 1971.
Postgame, Couturier shrugged off the thought that Thursday’s back-to-back was a chance to flush the loss, especially after the poor preseason game that preceded it.
“At some point, we’ve got to learn here,” Couturier said. “We’ve got to wake up. Last exhibition game we played was the same way. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, it’s training camp. We’re going to ease our way into the season,’ but we’ve got to wake up here.”
Thursday’s game against the Devils can be a clean slate. Rick Tocchet said pregame in Newark that, despite the result, the Flyers had a “fair” training camp, and that he wasn’t sure he would have changed anything about their preparation.
Travis Konecny agreed, and he shouldered the blame if the team felt that the noise around the game overshadowed their preparation. He described Wednesday’s opener as a “wake-up call.” But what kind of corrections can the Flyers hope to make in New Jersey?
“There’s like an art to everything, right?” Konecny said. “It’s not just like, skate hard, go to the guy. When you make contact, take a stick away, and then the second guy gets the puck. The second guy skating hard to help the first guy getting in there, you’ve got to be there.”
» READ MORE: Sielski: The Flyers embarrassed themselves against the Penguins. It’s not too early to be a little concerned.
While the Flyers made their late-season charge to the playoffs last year, Tocchet stressed the importance of staying even-keeled. “Never get too high, never get too low,” he said.
He said the same thing on Wednesday, for the opposite reason, after the Flyers looked the worst defensively that he had ever seen them under his tenure.
So, after a game in which the Flyers lacked both intensity and structure, what does Tocchet want to improve first?
“When you don’t have intensity, the Xs and Os suffer, because you have to make more decisions,” Tocchet said Thursday. “We just weren’t on pucks. They had the puck most of the night.”
Breakaways
The Flyers traded Devin Kaplan to Seattle for forward David Goyette in a minor-league swap. Kaplan was a third-round pick in 2022, and Goyette was a second-rounder in the same draft. Goyette will report to Lehigh Valley.
