Flyers flat in home opener, shut out by Canucks originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
After wrapping up a four-game road trip Thursday in Seattle and flying home Friday, the Flyers just didn’t have it for Saturday night’s home opener.
They weren’t sharp and they were outplayed in a 3-0 blanking to the Canucks at the Wells Fargo Center.
“We got enough time to prepare and get ready for this one,” Scott Laughton said, not using the schedule as an excuse. “Especially the home opener, you’ve got a lot of juice. It didn’t translate. It sucks right now, but we’re still early in the year, we still need to work on a ton of things and get better. And we will.”
The Flyers have dropped four of their opening five games for the first time since 2014-15, when they started 1-2-2.
John Tortorella’s club has given up 4.20 goals per game in this 1-3-1 start.
“I thought we’ve had some good minutes in the first five games,” Tortorella said. “We’re going to just coach, they’ll have tomorrow off, we go back Monday to practice and get ready to play our next game. We can’t do anything with what happened the past couple of games here. We’ve just got to try to get better as a team — that’s all you can do.”
The Flyers split their two-game regular-season series with the Canucks (2-1-2). They beat Vancouver a little over a week ago with a 3-2, season-opening shootout decision.
“Obviously it’s a tough turnaround. But tough turnaround or not, it’s our home opener, we’ve got to come out with a lot of energy,” Samuel Ersson said of traveling Friday from the West Coast. “I feel like maybe we didn’t. It’s definitely something we should have done.”
• Making the first home-opening start of his NHL career, Ersson converted 29 saves on 32 shots. The Flyers had breakdowns.
“We came out a little flat, they dictated the play in the first,” Erik Johnson said. “We seemed a little bit disconnected at 5-on-5, in our D-zone especially. No excuses, we have to be better.”
Ersson surrendered two goals in a 50-second span of the second period as the Canucks seized full control. The Flyers, trailing 1-0 before that, made a concerted push to open the middle stanza but came up empty. Vancouver then took the wind out of the Flyers’ sails with those back-to-back goals.
“Ers gives us a chance, Ers played great,” Laughton said. “He plays great every game and gives us a chance. So we’ll get back to the drawing board.”
Ersson, who celebrates his 25th birthday Sunday, beat the Canucks in the season opener with 24…