The start of the 2010-11 National Hockey League season today has set the ball rolling for the 30 teams that will be competing for the laurels. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers will play the first regular game of the season at 7:08 p.m. today at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, PA.
As is the case every year, each participant in this year's lineup of matches is confident of victory and has high hopes of qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Flyers have an edge as they were the runner ups of the Stanley Cup during the 2009-10 play offs.
The Penguins cannot be ruled out as the favorites as they lifted the Stanley Cup trophy in 2009 though they failed to perform well in the defense next year as they lost to Montreal in the second round of the playoffs. The team still has many who took the Penguins to victory and this can spell badly for the Flyers.
The Penguins have a number of ace players including forwards Sidney Crosby, who tied for the NHL goal-scoring lead last season, and Evgeni Malkin, who has moved to wing from center with admirable performance. The goalie Marc-Andre Fleury is also one to watch for although his performance was not that good before the postseason.
The Penguins gave one of the best performances in the 2009-10 seasons with an average of 3.04 goals per game though their aggregate average of 2.87 downgraded them to the 20th place in the league rankings.
