The Philadelphia Flyers opened the 2026-27 regular season with a 7-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Wednesday. The Flyers were as outplayed by the Penguins as the score suggests.<\/p>\n
The Flyers played a flat-footed first period. They went off trailing 2-0 after goals from Nicholas Robertson (1st) and Ville Koivunen (1st).<\/p>\n
In the second period, Evgeni Malkin (PPG, 1st) opened a 3-0 lead. A couple minutes later, the combination of a defensive lapse and a stoppable short side shot that wasn’t stopped left Philly in a four-goal hole.<\/p>\n
The gap then became five goals midway through the period. Filip Hallander (1st) extended the lead.<\/p>\n
In the third period, Robertson (SHG) scored his second of the game, benefitting from a lucky bounce off the end boards that went into the net off Dan Vladar’s\u00a0right skate.<\/p>\n
Vladar yielded seven goals on 38 shots. Arturs Silovs recorded a 19-save shutout.<\/p>\n
1ST PERIOD<\/p>\n
Vladar was tested with a pair of early shots from close range. Shots were 3-0 Pens through 2:38 and 4-1 through 4:00.<\/p>\n
Travis Konecny had Philly’s first bonafide chance two shifts later. The Flyers made their first push over the next several minutes. Rasmus Ristolainen knocked<\/p>\n
down Crosby.<\/p>\n
At 7:26, the Penguins took a 1-0 lead on a Robertson skate deflection of a Kris Letang shot. The secondary assist went to Sidney Crosby.<\/p>\n
The Penguins went on the game’s first power play at 10:42. Jamie Drysdale went off for holding.<\/p>\n
The Flyers had a dangerous chance off the rush but the opportunity went awry due to an extra pass from Travis Konecny toward Tyson Foerster that missed the mark.<\/p>\n
Trevor Zegras got caught on an ill-advised line change attempt without the puck, allowing Koivunen to go in from the blueline in and score at 15:44. The assists went to Samuel Girard and Kaeden Korczak.<\/p>\n
Shots:\u00a0 Flyers 5 – Penguins 11\u00a0<\/p>\n
Faceoffs: Flyers 8 (Zegras 0-for-4, Acciari 3-for-4) — Penguins 10<\/p>\n
2ND PERIOD<\/p>\n
Tippett was down on the ice when he was struck by a friendly fire shot. He returned to the bench.<\/p>\n
At 3:23, Martone took a blatant cross-checking penalty in front of the Pittsburgh net. Tyson Foerster turned in a great PK shift including a shot off a Koivunen giveaway. Even so, the Flyers ended up paying dearly for the bad penalty.<\/p>\n
At 5:03, Malkin blistered home a one timer from the high slot. The assists went to Hendrix Lapierre and Tomas Novak.<\/p>\n
Lapierre beat Vladar on a short-side goal to make it 4-0 at 7:26. The assists belonged to Filip Hallander and Declan Carlile. Also during the play, Jamie Drysdale was beaten on the walls. Still a play where a save was needed.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh’s Hallander (1st) was first to a loose puck ahead of Drysdale and made it 5-0 at 10:23. Assists went to Korczak and Girard.<\/p>\n
At 12:37, the Flyers responded to Simon Benoit getting boarded. Philly ended up with a two-minute power play. Philly had one early chance. Konecny turned a puck over. With play back\u00a0to even strength, Vladar erased an odd-man rush after a low percentage Foerster pass got picked off.<\/p>\n
Vladar had to make a point-blank save on Robertson after a Crosby set up down low.<\/p>\n
Nick Seeler got the only penalty (roughing) out of a late period scrum at 19:42.<\/p>\n
Shots: Flyers 7 (12 overall) – Penguins 15 (26\u00a0 overall)<\/p>\n
Faceoffs: Flyers 13 (21 overall, Acciari 7-for-9)\u00a0 — Penguins\u00a0 6 (16 overall)<\/p>\n
3RD PERIOD<\/p>\n
Carlile went off for interference at 4:26. The Flyers generated some late pressure on their second power play of the game but they still didn’t score.<\/p>\n
Conor Dewar went off for interference at 10:19. At 11:52, Robertson scored shorthanded on a wide shot that bounced off the end wall and went into the net off Vladar’s right skate. Hallander had the only assist.<\/p>\n
Konecny took a penalty in an after-the-whistle scrum. Chinakov deflected home the Penguins’ seventh goal of the night. Erik Karlsson and Rikard Rakell assisted.<\/p>\n
Shots:\u00a0 Flyers 19 overall – Penguins 38 overall<\/p>\n
Faceoffs: Flyers 37 overall\u00a0 — Penguins 21 overall<\/p>\n
FLYERS STARTING LINEUP<\/p>\n
Owen Tippett – Tvor Zegras – Porter Martone<\/p>\n
Alex Bump – Noah Cates – Matvei Michkov<\/p>\n
Tyson Foerster -Christian Dvorak – Travis Konecny<\/p>\n
Carl Grundstrom -Sean Couturier – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n
Travis Sanheim – Rasmus Ristolainen<\/p>\n
Cam York – Jamie Drysdale<\/p>\n
Nick Seeler – Simon Benoit<\/p>\n
Dan Vladar<\/p>\n
Joseph Woll<\/p>\n
POSTGAME RAV4 (RAV4 Things Revisited)<\/p>\n
1. Flyers middle six: Cates and Dvorak lines<\/p>\n
The Flyers didn’t win many battles, regardless of the line.<\/p>\n
2. Michkov<\/p>\n
Third-year winger Matvei Michkov had a quiet night. He had one shot on goal on three attempts.<\/p>\n
3. Special teams<\/p>\n
The Flyers were 0-for-3 on the powerplay with a shorthanded goal allowed. They went 2-for-4\u00a0 on the penalty kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
4. Martone\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flyers rookie winger Porter Martone took a penalty in the second period that proved costly in what was a two-goal game. He\u00a0finished\u00a0with no shot attempts and multiple turnovers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philadelphia Flyers opened the 2026-27 regular season with a 7-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins at Xfinity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-297385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}