Flyers

PHILADELPHIA -- Flyers fans fans treated the NHL's delayed opening day as if it were a playoff game, showing up in record numbers for enthusiastic pre-game partying and revelry.

The problem was their team performed like it was a preseason game, looking slightly rusty in a 3-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 1 of the league's abbreviated 48-game schedule "It wasn't one of our best games (either)," Penguins left wing Pascal Dupuis conceded. "But I think it's going to be like this around the league for a while. You just have to play well defensively."

SUMMARY: Penguins 3, Flyers 1

The Penguins scored on two of their first five shots against Philadelphia goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, and then rode a 26-save performance by goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to beat the team that eliminated them from the playoffs eight months ago.

The win was the 227th of Fleury's career, passing Tom Barrasso for the team record.

"A disappointing start, for sure," Flyers forward Scott Hartnell said. "I don't know if you want to chalk it up to not playing for eight months, but we didn't have any legs that first period."

Dupuis agrees with league-wide assertion that goaltending will be crucial in the early going as players try find their sharpness and teams try to get in sync after a six-day training camp and no preseason games.

"We saw tonight that the (Flyers) kept coming and coming," Dupuis said. "It wasn't pretty, but we blocked some shots and the saves were there."

Any concern that Philadelphia fans might offer some of protest because of the 119-day lockout was washed away by the large group of boisterous of fans that showed up early to celebrate the opening of the season. The attendance of 19,994 for the game was the largest regular-season crowd in Flyers history, breaking the previous mark of 19,992 set on February 21, 2009, vs. Pittsburgh.

Fans cheered passionately when Flyers took the ice in warm-up. They offered their "Let's go Flyers chant" before the game.

"It's always a great atmosphere here," Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov said. "Everybody knows how passionate Flyers fans are. Doesn't matter, whether it's regular season game or playoffs, they support and cheer for the team."

The Penguins killed all five Philadelphia power play opportunities, including two in the final six minutes.

"(Fleury) was solid," Crosby said. "It's not an easy place to play, and they have some dangerous players. He did a great job of hanging in there for us and making some big saves. Their power play gets a lot of chances no matter how good our penalty killers play."

Tyler Kennedy opened the scoring with a power play goal at 4:40 of the first period with defensemen Paul Martin and Matt Niskanen each drawing an assist.

"We knew we weren't going to come in here and like it's Game 6 of the playoffs," Penguins winger James Neal said. "We knew we'd be scrambling."

Less than three minutes later, Evgeni "Geno" Malkin played a draw back to James Neal, who rifled the puck past Flyers goalie Bryzgalov to make it a 2-0 game.

"In terms of executing, I think we can get better," said Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who had three shots on net with no points. "But I thought we still did a pretty good job of making sure we were worrying about the details, not trying to do too much."

The game looked like what the first preseason game looks like, with both teams experiencing performance levels that ebbed and flowed. Both of these teams have a collection of artistic players, but this game was more like a finger-painting than a masterpiece.

"I think if you ask anyone, you are in great skating shape," said Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik. "But battle conditioning is a lot different."

The Penguins and Flyers are heated rivals, and both teams tried to embrace that rivalry. There were a combined 77 hits between the two teams, including seven each from Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke and Philadelphia's Zac Rinaldo. But it seemed as if both teams had trouble sustaining their energy levels.

The Flyers had some bursts of energy in the second period, pulling within a goal when newly minted captain Claude Giroux scored on a slick feed from Hartnell. He threaded a pass through Chris Kunitz, who might have read that play differently had he been in mid-season form.

Giroux showed some spark a few times in the game, beating defenseman Paul Martin with a charge at one point, although he wasn't able to cash in.

Hartnell also made a sparkling home run pass midway through the third period that seemed to put Giroux on a breakaway. It was ruled offside, and the replays showed it could have been called either way. It was that close of a call.The Penguins scored on two of their first five shots against Philadelphia goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, who enters this season with much to prove in the Philadelphia net.