September 30, 2026

'Everything's zeroes again' for the Flyers as new season begins

Last year's playoff run has to be left behind now. It's a new chapter for the Philadelphia Flyers.

By Nick Tricome
PhillyVoice Staff

Nick Tricome/PhillyVoice

A quiet morning skate at Xfinity Mobile Arena before the 2026-27 Flyers season opener against the rival Penguins

Rick Tocchet stepped up to the press conference podium, still wearing his playoff hoodie from several months ago.

The Flyers had just wrapped their morning skate at Xfinity Mobile Arena, ahead of their home season opener Wednesday night against the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, in what will easily be their most anticipated Game 1 out of (a now) 84 in years.

Because several months ago, Porter Martone arrived, Dan Vladar put up a wall, Tyson Foerster defied a season-ending injury, and the Flyers rallied into the playoffs and up to those long-despised Pens in the first round, and then took them down in six games, with Cam York flinging his stick into a euphoric crowd upon scoring the OT winner.

Several months ago, a young and developing roster finally started to figure it out, and revitalized the brash and unapologetic brand of Flyers hockey that every generation of their fans remembers, but hadn't seen or felt in years. Most important of all, they brought their fans and the city to believe in them again, after so long of having little other reason not to.

They broke through, they started realizing their promise, and for the first time in what felt like forever, they started creating the kind of memories that folks in their own orange and black hoodies and sweaters will hold on to forever – see just about everything that first-round Penguins series brought.

But that was several months ago.

The Flyers have been at work all summer, and now they're at the doorstep of what comes next, which is entirely on them.

There's no looking back.

"Everything's zeroes again, right?" Tocchet said Wednesday morning. "It's a new year. Everything's zeroes. Last year's last year. Can we feel good about beating [the Penguins] last year? Yeah, but that doesn't come into tonight. This is a whole, brand new, different [year]. So I just say it's all zeroes."

"Obviously that was a special moment for our team last year," said York, who sat at his stall in the calm of a Flyers locker room that no longer had the adrenaline from the nearly two-month rush it existed in during the spring. "For the fans, the city, everybody, it was pretty special. But you gotta move on."

Because it's back to zero again.

The Flyers do have expectations this time. It comes with the excitement and is an important show of progress.

A playoff appearance, and a first-round win on top of it, raises the bar. So does an electric rookie like Martone, who will enter his first full NHL season on Calder Trophy watch after a 10 points in nine games debut late into last year that arrived at just the right time for the Flyers. And so will the drive of other key young pieces to get better, like Foerster, Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Alex Bump, Denver Barkey (when he returns from injury), and especially Matvei Michkov, who slimmed down and seems hell-bent on proving to everyone that he's a star, after a sophomore season from him that left himself and pretty much everyone else disappointed.

The expectations, though, are also a sign of the road getting tougher.

There's going to be more eyes, which means greater scrutiny.

There's no element of surprise anymore either. Teams are aware of how good the Flyers can be, and will show up ready to give them their best.

And the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference on the whole didn't get any less congested. If anything, it got even more crowded. The teams who faded down the stretch while the Flyers caught lightning in a bottle – like the Capitals and Islanders – are still there and tried to get better over the summer. The Penguins and defending champion Hurricanes didn't go anywhere either, and the Panthers and Maple Leafs, two playoff staples who crashed and burned last year, don't expect to be down again for this one.

But then there's the weight of the Flyers' own internal projections.

They're still a heavily young team, and the follow-up to a breakout playoff berth easily brings the anticipation – and maybe even the assumption – of only better going forward.

But it can be a source of tension, too, of overthinking, of gripping the stick too tight.

That fear is just as real – a prospect that general manager Danny Brière unpopularly tried to warn about earlier in the summer, but in a point that no less held.

Tocchet himself didn't show much concern about that thought, though, and neither did Foerster, who will be entering a season fully healthy for the first time in more than a year, which could set the stage for him to take off toward a 40-goal run.

"It's business as usual," Foerster said after practice in Voorhees on Tuesday.

It's back to zero.

"I think the excitement and the anxiety and stuff, that's usually what happens early in the season, first game," Tocchet said. "Everybody always, you know, you win the game, it's 'Oh my god, these guys are going to the Stanley Cup.' If you lose a game, 'they're in trouble.' That's just – we all do that. I've been part of the NHL for a lot of years, and everybody focuses on that one game. I just want them to go and just have fun, but also play our game."