Penguins open season with 3-goal loss to Flyers

On Wednesday, Mike Sullivan was somewhere he has not been very often over the previous 10 months.

A bench in an NHL arena.

Since March, the Pittsburgh Penguins coach had been conducting the duties of his office primarily through the lens of a laptop camera. A few hours before his team faced the rival Philadelphia Flyers at Wells Fargo Center in the first game of the NHL season, Sullivan allowed himself a few moments to appreciate the opportunity to coach, in person, again while combating the realities of a global pandemic.

“I’ve certainly gained much more appreciation for how fortunate we are to do what we do,” Sullivan said via video conference. “To be able to play the game that we love and to have the ability to get back on the ice with these guys is a thrill for me.

“Maybe I just don’t take it quite as much for granted anymore.”

Being the best team in their division, or state, should not be taken for granted, either.

That was evident during their 6-3 loss to their longtime rivals who seemingly faced few, if any, impediments.

Despite such a porous defensive performance, the Penguins professed optimism, particularly after controlling the play for a good portion of the second period.

“I thought we played a great game,” forward Brandon Tanev said. “We had a lot of great chances. We had some momentum at times. There were a couple of breakdowns in our game. As the group grows and we get better day by day, we’ll try to eliminate those things from our game. We’re looking forward to the next one.”

The first goal of the NHL season came from an unlikely source in Mark Jankowski. The former Calgary Flames castoff gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead only 5 minutes, 14 seconds into the contest by collecting a deflected pass to the right of the crease and roofing a wrister past the glove hand of goaltender Carter Hart.

After that, the Flyers power play took over.

At 15:11 of the first period, Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk deflected a puck past goaltender Tristan Jarry. That was followed up at the 19:44 mark by a tip-in by Flyers defenseman Nolan Patrick. Each score came on the man advantage.

“Obviously, specialty teams are a huge part of today’s game,” said Tanev, one of the Penguins’ top penalty-killers. “We want to have a great penalty kill. They got a couple there. It’s just us coming together as a group and getting better day by day. Obviously, we weren’t happy with how the penalty kill was today but that’s on us, the guys who penalty kill. I think, the next game, we’ll push the pace and do better in that situation.”

The Penguins got their own power-play goal 3:39 into the second period. After Hart settled a dump-in behind his net, his clearing attempted was intercepted by Penguins forward Sidney Crosby, who swatted an impressive one-handed backhander into the open net.

Philadelphia took a 3-2 lead at 18:54 of the second period after Joel Farabee scored while facing minimal resistance from Penguins defenseman Mike Matheson.

Making his debut with the Penguins, Matheson struggled as he was on the ice for three of Philadelphia’s scores.

“Our coaching staff is committed to helping Mike through some of these processes,” Sullivan said. “This game is not an easy game. It’s not for the faint of heart. You’ve got to make sure that you dust yourself off and you get back in the fight.”

A goal by Tanev, off cross-ice feed by Jankowski, tied the score again 3:01 into the third.

But after that, the Flyers controlled the contest.

Goals by forwards Michael Raffl at 5:37, Oskar Lindblom at 12:14 and Kevin Hayes at 12:34 completed the lopsided result.

Jarry made 19 saves in his first start as the Penguins’ full-time starting goaltender.

“There were a few that Tristan could have been sharper on,” Sullivan said. “But you could probably say that about all of us. … We all need to be better if we’re going to have the success that we need to have.

“We will get better. I know we’ll get better.”