The Flyers were considered the winless team of the season so far in this first month of hockey. Coming into Prudential Center, they were facing the Devils who were 5-1-0 and holding onto third place in the Atlantic Division, while the Flyers found themselves in last place with only three points from games that went into overtime. For the Devils, they had only one loss when they fell to the Rangers on October 13th.

So technically, defeating the winless Flyers should have been an easy task. Au contraire. The Devils played their worst hockey of the season on Friday night. Whether it was the Flyers adapting to the Devils’ style of hockey and breaking it down from within or the Devils just having a completely off night, the Flyers ended up with their first win of the season.

The Devils started the scoring right off the bat. Travis Zajac scored his first goal of the season just 47 seconds into the game, but the Flyers’ Jeff Carter answered a little over a minute later with a goal of his own (assisted by Flyers’ goaltender Martin Biron). With Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond in the penalty box for a boarding major, Mike Knuble scored a power play goal at 11:25 and had a 2-1 lead.

Not to be outdone by the Flyers, Dainius Zubrus beat Biron in the crease for a Devils’ power play goal at 15:09. With just 19 seconds left in the first period, Zach Parise caught the Flyers’ netminder’s mistake when he thought he had stopped a five-hole shot. Parise found the loose puck behind Biron and slammed the puck in, ending the period scoring 3-2 in favor of the Devils.

But after that first period lead, the Devils fell apart. Their game was completely off starting with Martin Brodeur. In Devils hockey, everything begins with Brodeur. If he falls apart or has an off night, the rest of the team crumbles beneath him. They were not playing the style of hockey they are used to.

“We play a certain style,” Zach Parise said. “Where we try to get the other team to play the way we play – but they adapted.”

Brodeur was right about one thing: “They played the game we wanted to play,” he told the press.

The Flyers adapted to the Devils’ style of hockey and ended up beating them at their own game. As Mike Richards said, “Jersey plays a style of hockey that is hard to play against.” But something heard throughout the Flyers’ locker room was that they adapted to the Devils’ style, but ended up playing it better then the Devils – which led to the breakdown of the Devils’ game on Friday night. The Devils literally fell apart after that first period.

In the second period, that need for division rivalry out on the ice that Coach Sutter always talks about was kicked up a notch when Leblond found Flyers’ bad boy Riley Cote and David Clarkson found Andrew Alberts. But it wasn’t until John Madden was sitting in the penalty box for hooking that the breakdown of the Devils hockey began to truly unfold.

With just six seconds into the power play, Simon Gagne scored on the man advantage at 11:57. Five minutes later, Scott Hartnell scored the Flyers’ fourth goal of the game. The Devils got just four shots on goal, while the Flyers’ had twice the scoring opportunities with nine shots on goal, two of which were goals.

In the final stanza, the breakdown of the Devils grew continuously worse from Brodeur, to the defense, to the skaters. Players were out of position. The Devils moves and plays weren’t as intelligent as they usually are. They literally looked like they were struggling to keep up with the Flyers. This breakdown led to another Flyers’ goal from Joffrey Lupul at 11:22, and then again with Hartnell finishing off the scoring with an empty-netter at 18:04. That final empty netter cleared the Devils’ Den at Prudential Center as angry, embarrassed Devils fans left the arena.

“We weren’t thinking the game the way we were supposed to,” Coach Brent Sutter told the press after the game. “We weren’t good enough to win tonight.”

Sutter would not imply one way or the other who would be in goal for Saturday’s 4:00 p.m. re-match in Philadelphia. He said it would likely be Brodeur, but he would not make his decision until Saturday morning.

Game time for Saturday’s Devils versus Flyers match-up in Philadelphia has been moved to 4:00 p.m. to accommodate the Phillies game. All 30 teams in the league will play on Saturday. This has not happened since October 2005, right after the lockout.

SIDE NOTES

Brandon Sutter (Carolina Hurricanes) scored his first career NHL goal against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday night. Brandon is the son of Coach Brent Sutter. Just a couple of weeks ago, Sutter told us how proud he was that his son had made the team. Like most proud fathers, he told us about the childhood days of the young Sutter when they lived in Chicago and they would call him in to go to bed and Brandon would shout back, “Just a few more minutes.” After a while, a few more minutes grew too long, so Coach Sutter would go out to retrieve him, only to end up playing hockey for the next hour with him. Brandon is part of the Sutter dynasty when he became the ninth Sutter to play in the NHL. He was drafted in 2007 by the Carolina Hurricanes. This season marks the 19-year old’s rookie season.

Barry Tallackson has begun practicing (no contact) with the team. Tallackson has been recovering after undergoing minor heart surgery on September 26th.

Bobby Holik made an appearance at practice with his arm in a cast. His father is in town for the week, but will be unable to see his son play. Holik suffered a severe break of his pinky finger during the Washington Capitals game last Saturday which required surgery where pins were inserted. He is expected to miss the next three to four weeks.

Still no report on when Brian Rolston will return to the line-up.

In Friday night's game, Travis Zajac recorded two points with a goal and an assist.