A Flyers season opener that easily had the most hype behind it in years ended in a total dud.

They got shut out by the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-0, Wednesday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena, shifting a packed home crowd that was ready to rally behind them from the word "go" into booing them off the ice by the end of the second period  – and at the final horn for whoever was still in their seats to voice their displeasure.

There were roars through the opening intros for a young team that just took this city on a whirlwind ride through the playoffs not even six months ago, and then when the long-despised Sidney Crosby got crushed across open ice by Rasmus Ristolainen in the game's early minutes.

But the magic the Flyers captured last season, which finally led their fans to start believing in them again, just wasn't there Wednesday night.

Instead, it was the malaise that most of the NHL roster players showed through their final two preseason games last week.

Nick Robertson scored on a sharp redirect of Kris Letang's shot not long after Crosby got decked to put the Penguins up 1-0. Then Ville Koivunen somehow split through every Flyer across center ice to shoot and score on goaltender Dan Vladar uncontested for a 2-0 Pittsburgh lead by the intermission.

"Obviously, we gotta figure this out quickly," head coach Rick Tocchet said postgame. "Since I've been here, that's the worst D zone I've ever seen."

There was no pushback in the second period. Instead, the trouble snowballed.

Evgeni Malkin, Hendrix Lapierre, and Filip Hallander piled on to put the Flyers in a 5-0 hole, which left the crowd with little other option but to boo – at the Penguins, for sure, but really, at their own team that was heavily disappointing.

By the end of the second, Vladar had 26 shots fired at him. The Flyers could only muster 12, and probably their best chance was when Travis Konecny cut in with a clean look at the net and Penguins goaltender Arturs Silovs during the first, but elected to wire the puck all the way across the ice to Tyson Foerster for a one-time try. Foerster whiffed on the shot.

There was little else doing for the Flyers otherwise, which is hardly the start to a new season they had in mind after coming so far last year – and definitely not after Robertson ping-ponged his second goal of the night off Vladar's skate in the third while the Penguins were shorthanded.

"We put Vladdy in a tough spot," Konecny said afterward. "Vladdy didn't deserve to go through that tonight."

The Penguins' last power-play goal from Egor Chinakhov to make it 7-0 with less than four minutes left was just insult to injury.

Oh, by the way, the Flyers' power play went 0-for-3. It's still bad.

Unfortunately, that sloppy preseason served as a heads-up: The Flyers have some rust to shake off, if it is rust, after most of the opening night roster only appeared in the latter two exhibitions against Boston and Washington.

"Honestly, it was a good camp away from the games, and we only had two exhibition games, so I'm not really too worried about it," Tocchet said after the morning skate earlier in the day. "Now if this is a pattern for the next couple weeks, then I'd be concerned, but I'm not concerned. It's more just a messaging thing for me."

For now, Tocchet, who began his second season behind the Flyers' bench, will have to hope some kind of message was received by his team moving on to the latter half of a back-to-back against the Devils in New Jersey on Thursday.

Until then, the fans who waited all summer to see what their now playoff-capable Flyers would do next will have to sit for the next 24 hours with that sobering display.

"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."

They're still looking for that last part after Wednesday night.

"We gotta learn here, we gotta wake up," said captain Sean Couturier to a flood of reporters in the locker room. "The last exhibition game we played was the same way.

"You know, everyone's like, 'Oh, it's training camp. We're gonna ease our way into the season,'  but no, we gotta wake up here."

"I mean, there's no panic [or] nothing, but I just think we gotta realize that we're not that good," Couturier continued. "What happened last year is last year, and we gotta move on. It's a fresh year. We gotta get back to outworking teams and trying to get points."

At least the Phillies are still alive.

Right-hand man

Noel Acciari left the ice on the Pittsburgh side of the rivalry back in the spring, then opened up Wednesday night in an orange and black sweater.

Acciari, who signed a two-year deal with the Flyers on July 1, was brought in to keep plenty of veteran, hard-checking grit on the bottom line, plus one other advantage.

"The right-handed draw," Tocchet said Wednesday morning. "He killed us last year. [The Penguins] don't have that [now], so that's good. It helps us for faceoffs tonight."

Sean Couturier is the regular center on the fourth line, but down the stretch of last season and into the playoffs, the captain and late veteran pickup Luke Glendening swapped in and out of the circle for one another.

Couturier, a left-handed shot, took faceoffs from the left side, and Glendening, a right-hander, took the draws from the right.

The same concept applied to Acciari, who's a few years younger (34) and has a bit of a higher motor than Glendening (37), which was evident during the first-round playoff series last season, when Acciari was a constant pain to the Flyers from the Pittsburgh side.

Through the first period, Acciari won three of the four faceoffs he took, and was maybe the most notable Flyer when it came to attacking the puck after an initial 20 minutes that saw them fall behind 2-0 with little other offense.

The energy is great for a spark, of course, but if it's a standout for a team on any given night, they're in trouble. It's the trap the Flyers fell into after one Wednesday night.

But, of course, it is still very early, too.

Tuck rule

The trim of Trevor Zegras' jersey had more eyes on it than there probably needed to be Wednesday night.

The NHL started cracking down its jersey tuck rule in the preseason, which Zegras pretty much became the face of.

Basically, players aren't allowed to skate around with the back of their jerseys tucked in so that the back padding on hockey pants is exposed, out of safety concerns and the officials' ability to see jersey numbers.

Zegras, notably, prefers to skate with his jersey tucked in, which wasn't called out at any point last season.

During the preseason, though, he was warned about it – along with Tocchet on the bench – and eventually was given a penalty for it as an equipment-related delay of game in the third exhibition against the Bruins on Sept. 24.

For the preseason finale against Washington a couple of days later, the Flyers took warmups with all of their jerseys tucked in as a show of support and perhaps in protest.

Tocchet said, though, that once the season starts, the Flyers can't afford to be taking needless penalties for something like an equipment violation.

And so Zegras' jersey was under inspection all night by officials, with warnings and conversations sent by the refs, while fans kept an eye out, too, every time he hopped over the bench.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman held a press conference before Wednesday night's opener.

I asked him if there would be any adjustments to the tuck rule. After Bettman tried to throw out a clever quip about it, he summed up that these were the league's rules, they were decided on with the NHL Players' Association, and they have to be enforced.

"It's actually been in the rulebook for ages," Bettman said. "But in terms of standardizing things from a safety and uniform standpoint, we thought it was the appropriate thing with the Players' Association to make sure our rules on our uniform were being enforced, including helmets, shields, cut-proof equipment and protection, because as fast and as physical as the game is, we want to make sure that it's as safe as possible."

The NHL has a history of coming around to enforce certain equipment rules every few years or so.

In 2017, the league went after the visor tilt, where players would flip the half shields up on their helmets as far as they could so that it would be completely out of their vision, and thus not protecting their eyes at all. To this day, you can still see a player sporting it here or there.

Then the jersey tuck had its initial turn several years prior, when Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin was made the poster boy for it from tucking the back of his jersey in as one of his signatures. He didn't agree with it.

Now the tuck rule is back around, with Zegras serving as the new leading example.

The Flyers were never given a penalty for it on Wednesday night, though, and his teammates did well enough to make sure his jersey was untucked. 

Pregame, though, Zegras made sure to get his shots in about it when he was interviewed by TNT's NHL crew:

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