Travel-fatigued Flyers blanked in home opener

Erik Johnson

      PHILADELPHIA – First games back after a long trip are always tough ones but the Flyers gave no meaning to the term “travel hangover” with their return-to-Philly performance on Saturday night.

      Just home after a challenging four-game swing through the northwest area of Canada and the United States, the Flyers came home and promptly took a nap in a 3-0 loss to Vancouver.

      A sellout crowd at the Wells Fargo Center found itself booing early and often.

      The Flyers alltime record in home openers fell to 32-18-7. Their record for this season stands at 1-3-1.

      To a man, the Flyers refused to use the road trip as an excuse for their uninspired play, even though their jet from the Seattle game on Thursday didn’t land in Philadelphia on Friday at 5 p.m.

      “Every team goes through stretches where their schedule has that,” defenseman Erik Johnson said. “But we have to find a way to be ready for our home opener. Our fans were very excited and we were excited, too. Just didn’t play good enough.”

      Scott Laughton couldn’t argue with that logic. No excuses, please.

      “Yeah, you can use it as one,” Laughton said. “But it’s the NHL, you come ready every day. Everyone goes through it, the west coast trip all the time. We’ve had enough time to prepare, get ready for this one.

      “It’s your home opener. You’ve got a lot of juice but it didn’t translate. But it’s still early in the year, we’ve got to work on a ton of things, get better and we will.”

      Captain Sean Couturier, struggling a bit in the early going this season, was moved from center to left wing on a fourth line with Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway.

      Like Johnson and Laughton, he suggested the Flyers couldn’t use the extensive travel as an excuse for laying an egg in Saturday night’s game.

      “It’s tough,” he said. “We wanted to put in a solid effort, make our fans proud. Tonight wasn’t our best.

      “It (the road trip) is never easy but it’s not an excuse. Everyone goes through that kind of schedule during the year. It’s on us to be better. You just have to learn from it, I guess.”

      Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson said the Flyers said the trip didn’t make things any easier.

      “Obviously it’s a tough turnaround,” he said. “But it’s our home opener. We have to come out with a lot of energy. I feel like maybe we didn’t. I think it’s something we should have done.”

      Goaltender Kevin Lankinen recorded the shutout for the Canucks.

      After falling behind by a 1-0 score in the first period, things went completely off the tracks for the Flyers in a span of 50 seconds in the second.

      First, Vancouver’s Brock Boeser backhanded a short rebound of a Jake DeBrusk shot past Ersson at 8:40.

      Then, before the Flyers could barely regroup, Kiefer Sherwood took advantage of a Teddy Blueger face-off win to put the Canucks ahead by a 3-0 count.

      The Flyers got off to a slow start in this game and were being outshot by a 10-1 margin halfway through the first period.

      Vancouver finally broke through, getting a goal from Nils Hoglander at the 16:09 mark. The play started with the Canucks winning a puck battle behind the net. Elias Petterssen wound up with control in front. He dished to Hoglander and Ersson couldn’t get over in time to offer resistance.

      Coach John Tortorella continues to use the word “sloppy” in certain stretches to describe the Flyers’ play in their three regulation time losses.

      “We were a little sloppy, a little disjointed,” said the coach. “In the second period, when we moved the lines around a little, we started creating some offense. Played better as the game went on.

      “We were flat, so we changed a lot of things to try to get us any type of juice at all to get us going.”

      The coach isn’t overreacting to his team’s slow start.

      “Oh, I thought we’ve had some good minutes in the first five games,” he said. “We’ve just going to just coach. We can’t do anything with what happened the past couple games here. We just try to get better as a team, that’s all you can do.”

      >Couturier on position change

      Couturier played in his 800th NHL game. He accepted the move to left wing with grace.

      “I found out right before the game,” he said. “Different, a little adjustment. But I’ve played it before, playing with ‘G’ (ex-Flyer Claude Giroux) for a couple years. We flip-flopped.”

      >Short shots

      Nick Seeler missed his fifth straight game with a nerve injury in his leg. He did receive a loud ovation in the pre-game season-opening introductions. . .The Flyers are off until Tuesday when they begin a home-and home with the Washington Capitals on Tuesday. The rematch is in D.C. on Wednesday. . .Noah Cates was a healthy scratch for the Flyers. . . . .The Flyers played their sixth home opener against Vancouver and are now 4-1-1 in those games. . .The Flyers finished up a five-game stretch against the Western Conference with a 1-3-1 mark. Last year they were 19-9-4 against the West. . .The Flyers opened the season back on Oct. 11 with a 3-2 shootout win at Vancouver.

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About Wayne Fish 2703 Articles
Wayne Fish has been covering the Flyers since 1976, a stint which includes 18 Stanley Cup Finals, four Winter Olympics and numerous other international events.