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Flyers finish preseason with loss to Devils

NEWARK, N.J. - It wasn't an ideal ending to the Flyers' preseason schedule - a 2-1 loss at the New Jersey Devils - but they escaped the Prudential Center without injury and with additional evaluation time for their borderline roster decisions.

Ilya Bryzgalov made 18 saves in the Flyers' 2-1 loss to the Devils. (Rich Schultz/AP)
Ilya Bryzgalov made 18 saves in the Flyers' 2-1 loss to the Devils. (Rich Schultz/AP)Read more

NEWARK, N.J. - It wasn't an ideal ending to the Flyers' preseason schedule - a 2-1 loss at the New Jersey Devils - but they escaped the Prudential Center without injury and with additional evaluation time for their borderline roster decisions.

The latter two issues of more concern than the former, anyway.

The Flyers, who have a couple of decisions to make on defense and forward, must finalize their roster by Wednesday; they open the regular season on Thursday at the Boston Bruins.

The Flyers finished the preseason 4-2-1.

On Saturday night, the Flyers took more shots than the Devils and scored first - a deflection off of left wing Scott Hartnell in the first - but then allowed two second-period goals.

Both teams went scoreless in the third period.

The Flyers are scheduled to practice on Sunday, but will be off on Monday.

"I thought we competed really well," said Flyers coach Peter Laviolette. "They had a lot of players in their lineup and we wanted to evaluate a lot of people. I thought, generally speaking about our team as a group and as a whole, we played really hard. We could have won that game. . . . More than that we get another look at guys we wanted to look at as we have to make decisions."

Two specific decisions include choosing between defenders Matt Walker and Oskars Bartulis and choosing for or against 18-year-old center Sean Couturier.

On Saturday, the Devils scored at 4 minutes, 12 seconds and 15:39 of the second period. Both goals - a nifty breakaway completed by Petr Sykora and a rebound stuffed home by David Clarkson - appeared nearly impossible to handle for Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, who bailed his team out with great stops on a number of other occasions.

"I always look at the preseason games as preparation," Bryzgalov said. "I see lots of talent in our team, lots of depth. If we continue to work hard and develop ourselves and each other, each person, I think we have pretty good chance to play well and compete every night."

Couturier's chances. Couturier appears to have landed precisely atop the bubble of this week's decisions.

"I don't know," Couturier said about his chances of making the team. "I think since Day 1 I've gotten better and better, and I gave a good impression, but I can't control what they're going to do with me, so I don't know."

Couturier was on the ice for 19:24 on Saturday.

Is he nervous?

"Yeah, a little bit," Couturier said. "I want to stick around with the team and get some experience. We'll see."