Flyers get caught sleeping, lose to the St. Louis Blues

Like a seasoned safe cracker, Flyers coach Peter Laviolette is spinning numbers on the dial, looking for the line combinations that will open the vault to the club's offense.

Seven of the 12 forwards who played for the Flyers in Saturday's 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues at the Wells Fargo Center were not on last season's team, and Laviolette jumbled his lines for the second straight game in an attempt to find out who fits best with whom.

But lines change all the time. "That had nothing to do with it," Chris Pronger said.

More so, the Flyers lost because they played most of the first period as if they were rubbing sleep from their eyes when it was the Blues who arrived at their hotel around 3:30 a.m. after beating Carolina in overtime at St. Louis.

"They did to us exactly what we were supposed to do to them," said Danny Briere, alluding to a first period that ended with the Flyers down by 2-0. "It looked like we're the team that traveled all night. We had no legs skating. Our execution was the worst it's been all year. We can use all kinds of excuses - the penalties, the line changes and all that - but it's simple: We didn't skate, and we didn't execute."

And they didn't communicate very well, either.

The Flyers were within 3-2 after Matt Carle scored an ugly power-play goal with 6 minutes, 46 seconds to go in the third period - the goal was awarded after video review - and they were carrying the play when it all came undone because goalie Ilya Bryzgalov and defenseman Braydon Coburn got their signals crossed. The two botched an exchange, and while Bryzgalov stood alongside the net dangling the puck, Matt D'Agostino took it from him, shot it into an unprotected net, and it was 4-2 with 5:40 remaining in the third.

Afterward, Bryzgalov said the mixup resulted from lack of communication.

"Bad communication. Somebody yelled 'I'll get it' and didn't get it," said Bryzgalov, who has allowed 16 goals in his last four games and gave up a soft goal less than two minutes following the opening faceoff. "We have to establish it, and it needs to be very simple. You need just three words - play it, leave it, or over. Not let everybody come up with his own words, like I'll pick it up or don't touch it. We need to make it simple so that everybody doesn't use his own words. And we're not going to have this problem in the future."

Bryzgalov had said Friday that he had yet to find his comfort zone, and he offered evidence. He appeared as stunned as everyone else in the building when a shot by defenseman Kent Huskins from between the blue line and faceoff circle got through him at 1:48 of the first. Jason Arnott set up the goal by taking a faceoff from Claude Giroux and drawing it back to Huskins.

The Blues went on to dominate most of the first period, and the Flyers were fortunate to be down only 2-0 when it ended. The Flyers awakened in the second period, but it turned out to be too late.

"I think the start is probably a little more alarming [than the communication failure]," Laviolette said. "The first 10, 12 minutes of that period, simple things - faceoff battles, puck battles, skating, first on the puck - I don't think anybody liked it. It wasn't the way we wanted to start."

Briere, who had one goal in the first six games, gave the Flyers the emotional jolt they needed when he lifted a perfect shot over the shoulder of Blues goalie Brian Elliott just 56 seconds into the second to bring the Flyers within 2-1.

Shortly after Briere's goal, rookies Matt Read and Brayden Schenn had scoring chances, and the Flyers continued threatening through most of the period. It seemed inevitable they would tie the score when they were on their second power play of the period, but the Blues backed in to keep several shots from getting to Elliott. Thirty-three seconds after the Blues killed off that second power play, defenseman Carlo Colaiacovo pounced on a loose puck in front of Bryzgalov and made it 3-1 with 4:24 to go in the second period.

The Flyers' quick start papered over the fact that they are largely a new team with a new goalie and that the season will have to go beyond October before things start to mesh.

"This is all still fairly new with the exchanges and the systems and what we're trying to accomplish," Laviolette said. "I think we've got to continue to work on things in practice, through video, through teaching, through talking, through communicating. We're still working."