Five Flyers Observations : A Home Opener To Forget

The Philadelphia Flyers opened the home portion of this season tonight. Well, sort of. After a rowdy crowd watched Flyers opening ceremony, that was it for the night.




11 seconds separated two Sharks goals and they never looked back. The Sharks beat the Flyers by a score of 8 to 2.

Flyers got a power-play goals by Shayne Gostisbehere and Wayne Simmonds for the only Flyers goals.

Here are four more observations from the Flyers 8-2 loss to the Sharks…




Shark Bitten 

Being on opposite coasts, the Flyers and Sharks never really played. However, with the new NHL schedule, they play twice. But, it has been very lopsided in the Sharks direction.

In their last 23 games played, the Flyers have only beaten the Sharks 3 times. But, it gets even worse. In now 12 home games, during that stretch, the Flyers have only 1 win.

To add the cherry on top, Sharks goalie, Aaron Dell, continued to show his former college coach how good he really was. In 4 games against the Flyers, Dell improve to 3-0-1 with a .973% and 1.25 GAA.

The Sharks, and Dell, just have the Flyers number.




Missed Shots

The Flyers were out-shot 48-33 by the Sharks. But, it isn’t as lop-sided as you think when you look at how many shots the Flyers missed the net or had blocked.

18 shots missed the net tonight for the Flyers. Add that to 8 blocked shots by the Sharks. It will add up quickly. That is total of 26 shots not making it to the net. It may not seem like a lot, but the Flyers had only 25 shots on net in the season opener.

Shot accuracy has always been a concern for the Flyers. But, nobody knew it would be this bad.




Turnovers

An issue for the Flyers over the final part of the season last year was turnovers. Well, tonight, those turnovers showed up in a big way. Costing the Flyers goals on multiple occasions.

After only giving away the puck 9 times during the first two games, the Flyers turned the puck over 14 times tonight. Not the best of efforts on the turnovers tonight.

But, the bigger problem was what came from those turnovers. The Sharks scored 3 goals off turnovers tonight. That is not how you win or even compete in a hockey game.




Penalties

Flag. Oh wait, thats football. Foul. Oh wait, thats basketball. Tonight, the Flyers were called for 6 penalties. That is twice the average of 3.1 from last season.

However, the problem with the penalties was they were lazy. There are good penalties, there are bad. But, the penalties the Flyers took tonight were just out of plain laziness.

Gudas checking a Shark without the puck. Hagg sticking his arm out and holding a Shark. Just plain laziness and silly mistakes.




Result : Flyers 2 – Sharks 8 , LOSS

Record : 1 – 2 – 0

Next Game : 10 / 10 Ottawa Senators , Ottawa ON , NBCSports Philadelphia 7:30pm