Dan Vladar Hung Out to Dry as Flyers Collapse Against Penguins in Opener: ‘Just Disrupting Plays’

Game 1 didn’t turn out how the Flyers and head coach Rick Tocchet envisioned. The Flyers got a pregame production that was filled with hope and excitement against a cross-state rival on Wednesday night. They ended up getting run out of their own building, 7-0, in a season opener that went off the rails early.

The Pittsburgh Penguins outshot them 38-19, and only 11 of the Flyers’ shots came at even strength. Pittsburgh scored twice in the first period, three times in the second and twice more in the third, and never gave the Flyers a reason to feel positive at all. The Flyers gave the puck away 21 times, nearly double Pittsburgh’s 11. The Flyers did win 36 of 58 faceoffs and lost every other part of the game.

The power play doesn’t look as if it has grown at all from last season. The Flyers went 0-for-3 with the man advantage, and Nick Robertson turned one of those chances into a shorthanded goal, one of two he scored on the night. Evgeni Malkin and Egor Chinakhov cashed in on two of Pittsburgh’s four power plays. Owen Tippett led the Flyers with four shots. Matvei Michkov put one on net and had three attempts blocked. Jamie Drysdale finished minus-3 and was outplayed on the boards the entire game.

“You’re on TNT, headline game,” Tocchet said postgame. “When we’re down 4-0, even some plays we were making, just disrupting plays. Obviously, we’ve got to figure this out.”

Travis Konecny pointed to the rushes. The Flyers allowed too many of them, he said, and the third forward back on each play has to act as the safety valve when the first two defenders miss. The Penguins kept skating into open ice anyway, and the forwards left the defense and the goaltender in bad spots from the first goal on.

Daniel Vladar was in the middle of it all night. He faced 38 shots, and saved 31 of them. He faced a steady stream of clean looks, and the Flyers did little to clear the front of the net. Konecny made sure nobody pinned it on him.

“We put the D in some tough spots and we put Vladdy in a tough spot,” Konecny said. “And you know, Vladdy, he didn’t deserve to go through that tonight.”

The pregame festivities invited the obvious question about distractions, and Konecny answered it by putting the responsibility on the veterans.

“If that’s what it is, then that’s, you know, the older guys in the room’s fault that we didn’t have them ready because that shouldn’t affect you,” Konecny said.

Travis Sanheim called the game about as ugly as it could have gotten. He rejected the idea that the Flyers treated the opener like a preseason game and credited Pittsburgh, a team the Flyers faced in the playoffs, for wanting it more and battling harder. He also pointed to a shortened camp, where breakouts and defensive structure look clean in drills until a full-speed opponent tests them. He put the blame where it belonged and was very direct.

“We shot ourselves in the foot on a couple of them,” Sanheim said. “We gave them probably half their goals.”

The shorthanded goal stung the most. The Flyers had the man advantage, and Robertson went the other way and scored. A short camp explains some of the ragged breakouts. Nobody can pin 21 giveaways, five minors, and a goal allowed on their own power play on a lack of reps.

The schedule gives them no time to overthink this loss. The Flyers play at New Jersey on Thursday and host the reigning champion Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, and Tocchet needs cleaner breakouts, more energy along the boards, and fewer giveaways in both games. If the Flyers turn the puck over 21 times in either game, the opener will start to look like a pattern.

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