October 02, 2026
Ed Mulholland/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The Flyers have spent way too much time in front of their own net through the first two games.
Maybe this is all forgotten about in a week.
Or maybe a week from now, Philadelphia is fully sounding the alarms.
The Flyers opened their new season Wednesday night and got embarrassed by the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-0, in front of a home crowd at Xfinity Mobile Arena that had just gotten back to believing in them again, only to revert right back to booing them off the ice.
"You saw it," head coach Rick Tocchet told the press after. "I honestly don't have an answer. I don't know if we won a battle tonight, and when you don't win battles, they have the puck...They out-coached us tonight, they outplayed us, they did everything better than us tonight."
The explanation was as blunt as the display was ugly, but really, what would've been there to even spin a positive out of?
It was an abysmal effort, from a group that just showed it's playoff-capable, yet looked nowhere close to it. They didn't even look anywhere close to ready to begin a season.
The next night in Newark, for the latter part of a back-to-back against the New Jersey Devils, the Flyers lost 3-2 in overtime, which at least gained them a point in the standings and looked a lot better on the scoreboard, but still left a lot to be underwhelmed by when watching.
They struggled to drive in toward the net. They couldn't get there at all against the Penguins, and on Thursday night against the Devils, their two goals were generated off shots from Travis Sanheim from way up at the point.
They really couldn't dictate offense or even general care and control of the puck either. Two games in, the Flyers have been outshot 82-44 and have gotten crushed by giveaways at a deficit of 44-29.
Their power play, which they've been fumbling to improve for years, is right back to the miserable spot it left off at 0-for-4 so far, while their defensive structure, which they relied on heavily last season in Tocchet's first year as coach, was next to nonexistent on Wednesday and was left getting carved up by New Jersey star Jack Hughes on Thursday – who would go on to score the OT winner after stripping the puck away from Sanheim behind the Devils' own net.
The new backup goaltender, Joseph Woll, making 41 saves in the loss was maybe the one saving grace.
"If it wasn't for Woller there, it could've been a lot worse," Sanheim said.
But it's been brutal sledding for the Flyers otherwise, largely out of their own doing.
"We just gotta be better, play our brand of hockey," center Christian Dvorak said. "We haven't gotten there at all yet."
Maybe they get there in a week, and this is all forgotten about.
Last year's Flyers did get off to a similar 0-1-1 start, where they were heavily outshot (73-43) and were arguably just as sloppy with the puck (40-24 in giveaways) in road losses to the Panthers and Hurricanes, before they eventually came home to rebound and outwork that same Panthers team for the first win of the season.
Or maybe the early disconnect for this year's team lingers, and suddenly, general manager Danny Brière's stated concerns about complacency and a possible "step back" from the offseason become scarily accurate.
Right now, though, there's only what the Flyers have put in front of their fans after two games.
None of it is good enough, not even close.
Poter Martone, the summer's Calder Trophy favorite, has one shot and a shuffling to the bottom of the lineup.
Matvei Michkov, who drastically slimmed down and looked hell-bent on having an impact season, is minus-2.
Trevor Zegras, who has his extended shot to stick as a top-six center, seems like he's had far more attention on whether or not his jersey is tucked in than for anything he's actually done on the ice so far.
While the veterans of this team, between the captaincy group of Sanheim, Travis Konecny, and Sean Couturier, have looked at a loss for what's going on.
"I mean, if it keeps happening, I guess we've got bigger issues," Sanheim said. "So we need to clean it up. [We] need to get back to playing the way that we know we can and know that works.
"I'm not sure why we're kind of straying away from that when it's worked in the past."
And maybe the Flyers do get there. There are still 82 more games after all.
But this team was expected to be better.
They were expected to be a heavily young group set to take off from a breakthrough playoff run that made Philadelphia want to be a hockey town again.
And they were expected to look a lot more talented and cohesive, now that Tocchet's systems had a full year to be instilled while their established core had the benefit of a full offseason to mesh and further develop after the bulk of it got established late into last season.
But right now, all that's there is a team that looks like it never got the memo that the season actually started, and knows it can't hide behind the excuse of an abbreviated training camp and preseason to accommodate a longer 84-game schedule – not after what they turned in these first two games compared to what was across from them.
"Well, yeah, but then you see Jack Hughes play, so..." Tocchet dismissed at the thought.
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