The Pittsburgh Penguins and Colorado Avalanche opened their 2026-27 seasons with lopsided wins on Wednesday night, as Pittsburgh shut out the Philadelphia Flyers 7-0 and Colorado beat the Los Angeles Kings 8-4.
Wednesday’s third game, a 2-1 Toronto Maple Leafs win over the New York Islanders, is covered in our separate game story.
Penguins 7, Flyers 0
Arturs Silovs stopped all 19 shots he faced and Nick Robertson scored twice as the Penguins routed their cross-state rivals at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, according to the NHL’s official game summary.
Robertson opened the scoring at 7:26 of the first period, with Kris Letang and Sidney Crosby assisting, and Ville Koivunen made it 2-0 before the intermission. Pittsburgh then pulled away with three goals in a span of 5:20 early in the second: Evgeni Malkin scored on the power play, followed by Hendrix Lapierre and Filip Hallander.
Robertson added a short-handed goal in the third and Egor Chinakhov finished the scoring on the power play at 16:37. Hallander had a goal and two assists and was named the game’s first star, with Koivunen second, per NHL.com.
Dan Vladar made 31 saves on 38 shots for Philadelphia. Pittsburgh outshot the Flyers 38-19 and went 2-for-4 on the power play, while Philadelphia was 0-for-3.
Avalanche 8, Kings 4
In Denver, Nathan MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen each scored twice and the Avalanche went 4-for-5 on the power play in a high-scoring win at Ball Arena, according to NHL.com.
Brock Nelson had a goal and two assists, and Parker Kelly, Nicolas Roy and Gabriel Landeskog also scored for Colorado. Cale Makar, Nazem Kadri, Jaden Schwartz and Devon Toews each had two assists. MacKinnon was named the first star, followed by Nelson and Lehkonen.
Colorado led 2-1 after one period and broke the game open with four goals in the second, two of them on the power play. Los Angeles kept pace for stretches, scoring twice while short-handed in the second period through Joel Armia and Trevor Moore. Brian Dumoulin and Artemi Panarin had the other Kings goals.
Mackenzie Blackwood made 27 saves for the win, while Darcy Kuemper stopped 21 of 29 shots for Los Angeles. The Kings outshot Colorado 31-29 but went 0-for-4 with the man advantage.
Up next
Thursday’s schedule features eight games, including two involving Canadian teams: the Edmonton Oilers visit the Vancouver Canucks to finish their season-opening home-and-home series after Tuesday’s 6-5 overtime loss in Edmonton, and the Calgary Flames host the Seattle Kraken in their opener.
Sources: NHL.com official game summaries and boxscores (Penguins-Flyers, Kings-Avalanche); final scores confirmed against the ESPN scoreboard.
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Photo: Nathan MacKinnon playing for the Colorado Avalanche in January 2020, not from Wednesday’s game. Quintin Soloviev, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
