“This is gonna suck this year!”

“They are gonna be SOOOO bad”

“There’s not sugarcoating it, this will not be a fun team to watch”

These are quotes I heard before the start of the Flyers home opener against the New Jersey Devils last night in the Wells Fargo Center. New coach John Tortorella had a totally different message for his players pre-game

“We need to develop a process and have an identity of who we are. The wins will take care of themselves….”

If the Flyers home opener is any indication of the type of identity this team is going to have, the phrase “gritty” will no longer only refer to the mascot! The Flyers offense came out hot, especially the 2nd line of Van Riemsdyk, Frost and Allison, that let the Devils know early they were going to be aggressive and Scott Laughton on his second shift mixing it up to try and “earn the respect” Tortorella has mentioned has been missing from the organization. But after back to back penalties (including a weak holding call on Morgan Frost) Carter Hart let up a soft goal to Alexander Holtz to put New Jersey up 1-0 and the Wells Fargo crowd, which was 75% full, let out an audible groan. “Same old Flyers!” One fan yelled.

That feeling lasted 23 seconds

Wade Allison scores to pick up Hart with some nice passing from Deangelo and Provorov to make it 1-1 and this team was off and running! John Tortorella also preached doing the little things in his pre-game speech and playing right, and you can see early that’s what this team is doing. The Flyers ran out of gas toward the end of the 1st and it seemed like they were passing too much, so they made an adjustment.

After two cheap shots on Travis Konecny, Provorov made a sweet move to keep the puck in the zone and allowed Konecny to score his 1st goal of the year

The little things

23 seconds later, Morgan Frost put a shot straight on the net rather than try to find the perfect shot like they were doing in the 1st period, and it found the back of the net to make it 3-1.

The little things!

This team needed an identity. At the moment, they don’t have a captain. No one in the city seemed to find the adjectives to describe this team before the start of the season and there wasn’t a public acknowledgment of who the leader of this team is. Maybe that's why John Tortorella got the biggest ovation during pre-game.  It may have been just one game, and it may have been the Devils, but as Torts told his team before the puck dropped, It starts with game one.

“Maybe this team will be fun to watch this season” the one guy said to his two friends after the Flyers went up 5-2 in the third

“Maybe they will” I said to them as I walked toward the exit. “Maybe they will be fun to watch after all”

Bullets From The Box

●       John Tortorella was the first person to say this team needs a lot of work, and they do, especially in finishing periods. All three periods the Flyers looked like they ran out of gas with 8 minutes left

●       After Carter Hart gave up his first goal, he was locked in. He didn’t “stand on his head” but he was very fundamentally sound and it showed with 35 saves

●       The defense needs to be better controlling the crease. It got better in the 3rd, but for the first two periods, the Devils seemed to park there with little resistance, especially from Nick Seeler

●       Knowing the line is going to be important. The Flyers had zero penalties in the 2nd period and were a +2.

●       However, Tony Deangelo seems to take the lead role of enforcer and he’s not alone. At one point, forward Nick Deslauries looked like he was ready to drop the gloves on two Devils at the same time!

●       Tyrese Maxey was in the building and got a nice cheer from the crowd, Rob Thompson beat the opening drum to start the “Let’s Go Flyers” chants, but the two biggest reactions from the fans belonged to Torts getting cheered….and Ryan Ellis getting booed pregame.

●       Hits and blocked shots told the story - at one point it was 18 blocked shots to 6 in favor of the Flyers and hits ended up being 28 - 18, but those 18 hits from the Devils were way softer than the 28 the Flyers seem to put on New Jersey

• Sheik Meah- Olde City Sports/Delco Dive/ OCSN Live