The Flyers have acquired Steve Downie from the Colorado Avalanche straight up for Max Talbot. Downie joins the Flyers for his second stint with the team. This is a good trade and here's why.

The Anaheim Ducks not only lead the NHL in Italian-y sounding, last-named players, but now they also lead the NHL in wins (tied w/ SJ and Colorado) after storming back from an 0-2 deficit against the Flyers tonight.

<--The Flyers offense receded in the third period faster than Ryan Getzlaf's hair line.
Image: Balding Blog

The Flyers looked like a different hockey team tonight than they did the previous 9 games this season. The offense was fluid and did not completely stop in the 3rd period. Nobody had a bigger game than Vincent Lecavalier.

Lecavalier recorded his fifth career hat trick tonight, first in Philadelphia. Lecavalier was moved to RW on the first line, after perviously centering the 2nd line, in order to help ignite goal-less Claude Giroux. It looks like the opposite happened though, as Giroux assisted on 2 of Lecavalier's goals tonight.

The Flyers (2-7-0) took to the ice tonight after what seemed like roughly 3 months off. Before tonight, the Flyers had less points than a triangle and the NHL's worst record. Points needed to be earned tonight, going against the 2-5 Rangers. (Though I will cut the Rangers some slack because their first 9 games this season are all road contests)

Going into this game, I think most Flyer fans knew it had the potential to get really ugly. Truth be told, the score doesn't reflect the game completely. It was not a drubbing, the Flyers were never really out of it, but just watching this team you knew there was no way they were winning it. You'd figure the effort would be a little stronger against the Penguins of all teams, but the 2013 Flyers look like they're skating in sand.

The Flyers will be without Vincent Lecavalier and Scott Hartnell going in to what is undoubtedly a very difficult stretch of the season. Tonight the Flyers will visit Detroit before coming back home to host Vancouver & Pittsburgh on Tuesday & Thursday respectively.

The Flyers earned their first win tonight against the Florida Panthers in Craig Berube's coaching debut. Don't get me wrong, we should be happy, but the Flyers should have posted more than 2 considering all the time they spent on the power play. PP continues to be a weak area for them. Scott Hartnell said it simply in the postgame, "Our power play was terrible." But let's focus on the positives instead.

After opening the season with three straight losses the Flyers did the kind of, sort of, not really unthinkable and fired coach Peter Laviolette.

These comments about training camp by Ed Snider may have been the best foreshadowing. "I thought our training camp, quite frankly, was one of the worst training camps I've ever seen...There was nothing exciting. Nobody shined. Nobody looked good."

Assistant coach, Craig Berube, will act as the Flyers manager going forth.

The Flyers visited the Montreal Canadiens and former Flyer Danny (Daniel now I guess) Briere. The orange and black fell in the end by a score of 4 to 1, as they opened their season 0-2, both losses coming to teams from Canada.

Not even 24 hours after ruining Montreal's home opener, the Toronto Maple Leafs repeated the feat in Philadelphia. After Brayden Schenn scored the first goal at the very end of the first period (assisted by newcomers Lecavalier and Streit) things slowly unraveled for the Flyers.