For the third time in five years, the Philadelphia Flyers finished with the worst team save percentage in the NHL.
The combination of Samuel Ersson, Aleksei Kolosov, and Ivan Fedotov posted a .872 SV%, which was surprisingly 12 points lower than the previous year when they tied with Ottawa for last place. Even including 2019-20, their best finish was 16th league-wide but the last 5 years have proven to be futile.
This past season, Ersson led the team with a .883 SV% compared to Fedotov’s .880 and Kolosov’s .867. They were so bad that Kolosov finished the year with the league’s worst mark, Fedotov was 5th-worst, and Ersson was 9th-worst amongst goalies with a minimum of 15 games played.
There was some hope that Fedotov would have acclimatized himself after having just arrived in North America at the very end of the 2023-24 season. He had a roller coaster season that saw some ups but a lot more downs, which forced them to bring in Kolosov.
Kolosov didn’t steady the ship and head coach John Tortorella kept pushing Ersson in between the pipes as he envisioned giving him a number one goaltender’s workload. The young Swede suffered through a couple of injuries but similarly to his counterparts, was far too inconsistent and finished with another sub-.900 save percentage.
Things really went off the rails when Carter Hart was forced to leave midway through the 2023-24 season. Ersson went from a 12-6-3 record with a .911 SV% in his first 21 games as a backup to 11-14-5 with a .875 SV% and 86 goals allowed in 30 appearances after the fact.
Ersson was essentially run into the ground as he ended up appearing in all but 6 games to end the season. Felix Sandström and Cal Petersen were unable to hold the fort during their spot starts and Fedotov’s arrival wasn’t helpful either as the Flyers barely missed the playoffs after holding their spot for nearly five months.
Until the end of the 2024-25 season, Ersson was playing the majority of the games once again, and it looked like the workload was taking its toll on him. Kolosov and Fedotov were just nowhere near good enough but the Flyers almost had no other choice but to keep going.
After finishing 4th-last by the end of the season, the Flyers were adamant in getting a new goaltender to better compliment Ersson and alleviate his workload. They were rumoured to have been in on Thatcher Demko and Joel Hofer but the prices were too high. In the end, they signed Dan Vladař to a 2-year deal worth $3.35 million per season.
With Jake Allen having signed a new deal right before the noon deadline, the goaltending market was going to be a desolate wasteland. The Flyers felt that Vladař was the better option out of Ilya Samsonov, Anton Forsberg, and Alex Lyon, and his track record as a dependable backup goaltender might have helped his cause.
The 27-year-old had spent the better part of his young career as the second option to the likes of Tuukka Rask, Jacob Markström, and Dustin Wolf. He’s posted a career mark of .895 over 105 games stretched across 5 seasons and his best year came in 2021-22 when he posted a 13-6-2 record with Calgary to go along with a .906 SV% and a 2.75 GAA.
Over his last 3 seasons since, Vladař has gone 34-26-13 with a .892 SV%, which to be fair, would top all performances made by Flyers goaltenders over the last 2 seasons.
His numbers in 2024-25 had been a little skewed as well with a subpar .802 SV% while shorthanded but owning the 15th-best save percentage league-wide while playing even-strength, tied with Sergei Bobrovsky and Ilya Sorokin with a .915 mark.
Outside of an 8-game blip in December and January that saw him post a 1-5-2 record with a .854 SV% and a GAA just under 4, Vladař had posted some good lines.
With the Flames in the midst of a playoff push, Vladař finished the year with a 6-1-1 record over his final 9 games with a .927 SV% and allowing just 17 goals in that span. He also started out 5-5-3 with a .904 SV% that was marred by 2 performances where he allowed 11 goals on 67 shots.
It might not be a move that pushes them over the line but it finally gives them a little more stability in goal, while also having a backup option they can entrust to relieve Ersson from time to time so that he doesn’t burn out once again or suffer through another injury.
With Vladař in the fold, that likely means Fedotov finds his way to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms via waivers, which might not be the worst thing in the world for either party. Fedotov can look to hone his craft once again and perhaps gain back the confidence he once had as a standout netminder in the KHL.
Fedotov will first have to clear waivers to report to the Phantoms but considering his $3.28 million cap hit in the final year of his 2-year contract, it seems very unlikely he gets claimed.
He will be joined by one of the Flyers’ top goaltending prospects in Carson Bjarnason, who graduated from the junior circuit after 4 years with the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings. The former 2nd round pick posted a 22-15-3 record in 40 contests with a .913 SV% and a 2.93 GAA this past season for a Brandon team not known for their offensive prowess.
The Flyers also expect Kolosov to report to training camp this season, and if that is the case, it could mean an AHL assignment for him as well, leaving the Phantoms with several options to choose from. Unless the Flyers roll with 3 goaltenders, which seems very unlikely, the three aforementioned netminders should figure to battle for starts on any given night in 2025-26.
The Flyers also signed Yaniv Perets to an AHL contract. The 25-year-old posted a 12-12-1 record with a .921 SV% in 27 games for the Bloomington Bison of the ECHL this past season. While he did see some time with the Chicago Wolves in the AHL, Perets was mostly signed as organizational depth as a role with the ECHL’s Reading Royals is all but likely.
After 3 years in the NCAA with Quinnipiac University, he’s appeared in 2 NHL games for the Carolina Hurricanes, 4 games for the Wolves, and 61 games in the ECHL for Norfolk and Bloomington.
Health permitting, this could be the best tandem the Flyers have rolled with since January of 2024. Ersson needs a dependable backup to take some of the load off his workload and Vladař has proven that he can be called to the plate on any given night and perform admirably.
If all goes as planned and there’s no drama in the crease as we head into training camp, it is very likely we see the Flyers featuring Ersson and Vladař, the Phantoms rolling with Bjarnason, Fedotov, and Kolosov, and Perets leading the charge for Royals in the ECHL.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login