Emery shines as the Flyers keep out Hurricanes

Ray Emery, pictured right in goal for Philadelphia with teammate Ryan Parent last month, kept his first shutout for the Flyers on Friday night as they defeated the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0.

Ray Emery posted his ninth career shutout in his Philadelphia debut as the Flyers beat the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0 in their season-opener on Friday. The goalie, who joined the club in the summer from the Russian club Atlant Moscow, turned away 28 shots as the Hurricanes failed on eight power play attempts. "We got a lead and were able to keep it," Emery said.

"We had a few penalties there and if you don't score, the other team gets a momentum boost, and if you do, it is the opposite, so that [the goals] was huge for us," he said. The Philadelphia scores came just 22 seconds apart in the second period. Jeff Carter broke a scoreless deadlock 25 seconds into the session and Mike Richards quickly turned it into a 2-0 game as Philadelphia made Carolina pay for a carry over high sticking penalty from the first period.

"It's kind of a broken record, but special teams bailed us out," said Richards. "Yesterday I thought we had a good practice with pretty much the groups you are going to play with. "It always helps to have a little chemistry and knowing where people are going and who you are playing with." Carolina had a goal by Eric Staal disallowed in the first period when officials ruled that the Hurricanes defenceman Andrew Alberts had been guilty of passing the puck with his hand.

"I was just trying to feed a puck out with the shaft of my stick to somebody in the slot and it caught my thumb," Alberts said. "It was a hand pass, as simple as that. It was just a mad scramble on the ice." Staal said: "I don't think we were overly bad. We had our chances and they just didn't fall. "We've got to do a little better job of keeping it simple, throwing ugly shots at the net and crashing the net.

"I think we can get to the net a little bit better than we did tonight for those second opportunities and rebounds." Elsewhere, the Pittsburgh Penguins began their defence of the Stanley Cup with a hard-fought 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers. Sidney Crosby and Tyler Kennedy scored in the second period with the game level at 1-1. Before the game, the home team celebrated last season's success by raising the Stanley Cup winning banner.

"I thought we did a good job of focusing," Crosby said. "You're sitting around a little bit, but I thought it worked to our advantage. We were skating pretty well and got off to a great start." Finland hosted its first NHL regular season fixture as the Florida Panthers beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-3 in a shootout in Helsinki. Before the game, the Panthers appointed Randy Sexton as their permanent general manager, a position he had held on an interim basis since the summer.

Meanwhile in Stockholm, Sweden, the Detroit Red Wings lost 4-3 to St Louis. Paul Kariya scored twice for the Blues, who came back from 3-1 down to win. * Reuters