The Flyers drop their season opener being shutout by the Penguins in Pittsburgh 4-0 last night. While Robert Esche played bad enough to lose the game for the Flyers, Marc-Andre Fleury really won the game for the Penguins. Fleury had an awesome game stopping all 40 Flyers shots and earned the first star. Esche only stopped 3 of 5 shots in the first period, 4 of 6 in the second period but did stop all 10 shots in the third.

The defense did look a bit slow at times. While Hatcher does have some positive attributes, skating with any speed just is not one of them, the same for Rathje. But if you look at the score card neither was on the ice for the first 2 goals. The #1 line with Pitkanen and Meyer were on.

The offensive pressure was decent, but the passing was sloppy. The Flyers just did not have an answer for Fleury. Even with two 5 on 3s the Flyers were 0-10 on the Power Play. They did kill all 4 Penguins power plays if one wants to look for a positive.

Pitkanen picked up the most ice time with 26:43, Gagne led the Flyers with 8 shots. Hitchcock coached his 750 NHL game.

Flyers play their home opener on Saturday against the Rangers. Hope home ice can help get them their first win. No need to panic yet, if I recall correctly last season the Flyers first game was against the Rangers and they looked very bad then too.