2025-26 is going to be another important developmental season for the Philadelphia Flyers as a whole. A lot of forwards are going to be tasked to improve on their recent seasons, there are a few young defensemen that need to step up, but it’s the goaltending that’s going to be very interesting to follow.
The Flyers traded Ivan Fedotov to the Columbus Blue Jackets purely as a salary cap dump. Fedotov had one year remaining at $3.28 million and the Blue Jackets took all of it without the Flyers needing to retain, which gives them a little bit of leeway to start the season financially.
However, it also clears the room for all the other goaltenders left on the roster, giving them all a fair shot of playing at their respective levels without any distractions, hiccups, or having to form a three-headed committee, which as we saw last year, helped no one.
Fedotov was ticketed to hit waivers for the purpose of reassignment to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms before the trade, which would have given them a crowded room with Aleksei Kolosov and Carson Bjarnason involved as well. The former is looking for a bounce back after a disastrous debut season and the latter is graduating from the junior levels in the hopes of further development.
Fedotov would have made things murky, someone would have had to be a healthy scratch, and the revolving door of goaltending starts would have led to someone being disgruntled and/or zero consistency.
The trio of Fedotov, Kolosov, and Samuel Ersson combined for the worst single-season save percentage in the salary cap era at 87.9%. The cream of the crop was Ersson’s .883 SV% through 47 games, followed by Fedotov’s .880 SV% in 26 saves and then Kolosov’s ghastly .867 SV% in 17 games.
Additionally, the Flyers trio combined for a 3.22 GAA, a -45.5 GSAA, only 31 quality starts, and 29 recorded “bad starts”, which according to Hockey Reference are games where the goaltender’s save percentage is 85% or below.
If the team was given even slightly below average goaltending, things could have been a whole lot different, even going back to the 2023-24 season. That’s why Daniel Brière felt the need to try and find a more dependable tandem partner for Ersson in what turned out to be Daniel Vladař on July 1st.
While Vladař’s numbers aren’t noteworthy compared to some of the rest of his competitors league-wide, they are a lot better than what the Flyers have had over the last few years. Vladař’s .898 SV% and GAA under 3 would have been a welcome sight for any of the aforementioned trio.
As a backup to Tuukka Rask, Jacob Markström, and rookie Dustin Wolf, the Czechia native has posted a career .895 SV% and a 2.99 GAA to go along with a 49-34-16 record. His 2024-25 season was a weird one in that it had a few Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde splits.
If you condensed his season into halves, the first half he posted a 6-6-5 record in 17 games with a .886 SV% and a 3.10 GAA with 2 shutouts. He then ended the season with a 6-5-1 record in 13 games with a .913 SV% and a 2.30 GAA and 0 shutouts.
Even further, his numbers look a lot worse because of his porous performance while shorthanded, where he posted a .802 SV% compared to his .919 SV% while playing even-strength hockey, which was tied for 15th best with Sergei Bobrovsky and Ilya Sorokin, albeit in a smaller sample size than the two Russian bell-cows.
Nevertheless, he provided the Flames with stability in goal when they were running with a 1A/1B tandem before Wolf took over. He then provided stability for Wolf as a veteran backup and played well when called upon, almost getting the Flames over the line.
Outside of a 1-5-2 blip in December-January, where Vladař stopped 85.4% of the shots fired his way, he was good enough the rest of the way, which is a good starting point for the Flyers.
So, where things become a little more intriguing is that Vladař is the only goaltender signed through this season, outside of Bjarnason who is entering the first of 3 years on his ELC. Ersson is finishing up his 2-year deal that had a cap hit of $1.45 million and Kolosov’s ELC is expiring.
Fedotov was going to be apart of that group that required a new contract but with him out of the picture, it allows Kolosov to stake his claim to the crease in Lehigh Valley, while Ersson can focus on guarding the cage in Philadelphia in what should be another 1A/1B type tandem.
Kolosov desperately needed a better developmental path than the one he took last year. He felt he was ready for the NHL and made things extremely difficult on the Flyers brass, and unfortunately, he faltered when given the opportunity he asked for.
With the Phantoms, Kolosov can now get the starting goaltending workload he’s been yearning for as Bjarnason will more than likely be eased into his first season of professional hockey. Considering injuries are always apart of the game, Kolosov can also play his way back into the picture for the Flyers if he can keep his head down and return to his KHL-form.
Similarly, Ersson has a lot to prove as well. The 25-year-old Swede has provided the Flyers with amazing goaltending in patches, primarily his very first stint with the club in 2022-23, as well as his first half stats as Carter Hart’s backup in 2023-24.
Since January 20th, 2024, Ersson has gone 33-31-9 in 78 appearances, while allowing 223 goals on 1,638 shots for a .864 SV% and a GAA just below 2.90. Within that range there’s been a lot of peaks and valleys and Ersson was also ran into the ground at the end of the 2023-24 season with no help coming from the goaltenders within the organization.
However, those are not the numbers the Flyers want to hitch their horse to, even for the next few years as Bjarnason and Egor Zavragin continue to develop. That is why 2025-26 is going to be such an important season for the Swedish netminder as he looks to work his way to another extension and reclaim his position in the goaltending hierarchy.
The beauty of the Flyers financial books is that a lot of their players – even going back to last year – are going to be playing on the final year of their contract. With the cap rising and a lot of players fighting for their futures, the Flyers are in a good spot with nearly $47 million in cap space next summer and that number jumps up to $71.75 million the next year with even more players playing out their contracts.
Ersson and Kolosov are going to have to battle and prove their worth to the Flyers front office, which is never a bad thing, considering how well players tend to play on the final year of their contracts. Even just average goaltending, at 90%, would go a long way for both players, as well as team success.
The team needs to be better in front of them but they also need to bail out mistakes from time to time. If they can bump their team save percentage from 87.9% to 90%, or even 89.5%, that would go a long way in another developmental season.
We’re not asking for a lot but with how things have gone recently, it seems like an improbable task. Training camp has been a bit rough on Ersson so far, while Kolosov has shown some fight, outside of his performance during an ugly 5-1 loss to Washington the other day.
Goaltending can’t continue to be the Flyers’ Achilles heel and it’s high-time that the organization looks to solidifying the position, one way or another, whether that’s with or without guys like Ersson and Kolosov. They will have a chance to fight tooth and nail but the front office will be keeping close tabs on the duo this year.
With the Flyers opening up their season tonight against the Panthers, it will be Vladař in goal and Ersson backing him up, which might be even more reason for the latter to really up the ante this year.
