Friday was the fifth anniversary of Steve Mason’s final game as a Philadelphia Flyer, when he made 20 saves in a 4-2 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on April 8th, 2017 at Wells Fargo Center. In honor of that, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at the Oakville, Ontario native’s career and look at what made him special and how he helped the Flyers in goal in one of the gloomiest eras in franchise history.
The initial trade that landed Mason in the City of Brotherly Love was a steal in itself already. Paul Holmgren acquired goaltender Steve Mason from the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for fellow goalie Michael Leighton and a 2015 third-round pick on April 3rd, 2013. The pick was traded again to Toronto and the Maple Leafs drafted Mārtiņš Dzierkals with it, who to date has never played in the NHL. The Blue Jackets gained a first-round pick in return in that trade that they used on Gabriel Carlsson, who has only played 70 NHL games so far. Leighton never played a single game in goal for Columbus either.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, there were questions surrounding not just Mason upon his arrival, but the Flyers’ goaltending situation in general. Mason had burst onto the NHL scene in 2008 with Columbus and had taken the league by storm, posting a 33-20-7 record, .916 save percentage, 2.29 GAA, and a whopping 10 shutouts, which remains the most in a single-season in Blue Jackets history.
The 2006 third-round pick led Columbus to the 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in franchise history and won the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie. He also finished second in Vezina Trophy voting to Boston’s Tim Thomas as the league’s top goalie, and finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting as the league’s most valuable player behind a trio of Russian superstars in Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, and Pavel Datsyuk. After that wildly successful season however, his career unfortunately turned south in a hurry.
After a 33-win rookie season, Mason would post a dismal 63-79-20 record with Columbus from 2009-10 until his trade to Philadelphia. Over the course of that time, he also posted a measly .899 save percentage and 3.13 goals against average. The Blue Jackets missed the playoffs every single year, and Mason was supplanted of his starter’s job in 2012-13 by Sergei Bobrosvky, who the Flyers had traded to Columbus for three draft picks in the 2012 offseason. Bobrovsky would go on to win the 2013 Vezina Trophy in his first season with the Blue Jackets after replacing Mason.
Mason was at a crossroads in his career. He thought about quitting the sport altogether and going home. The success he had enjoyed early in his career seemed to be all but gone no matter how hard he worked. Luckily, the Philadelphia Flyers, mainly goaltending coach Jeff Reese, saw something in the 6’4″, 228 pound right-handed catcher, and after doing their homework, general manager Paul Holmgren made the fateful trade for Mason, sending Leighton and the third-round pick the other way.
The Flyers were in the midst of a goaltending mess at the time. Ilya Bryzgalov was in the second year of his infamous mammoth nine-year, $51 million contract, and was absolutely horrendous. The Flyers had a couple of backup goaltenders in Leighton and Brian Boucher who didn’t play much at all and when they did suit up, they didn’t play very well.
Philadelphia decided to take a flyer on Mason to see if he could stick around. It was a low-risk investment for a team that had lacked stable goaltending for so long, and it ended up paying off almost immediately. Mason appeared in seven games in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season for the Flyers, recording a 4-2-0 record, .944 SV%, and 1.90 GAA in that span. That was enough for Holmgren to extend Mason with a one-year contract for 2013-14, and he ended up buying out Bryzgalov’s contract as well and replaced him with Ray Emery, solidifying Mason as the starting goaltender for the next season.
In his first full season on Broad Street, Mason was nothing short of spectacular. He equaled his single-season career-best win total of 33, posted a 2.50 GAA and .917 SV%, and racked up 4 shutouts in 61 games that season. He led the Flyers to the playoffs against the New York Rangers, and had he not been injured with a concussion suffered at the end of the regular season against the Pittsburgh Penguins and been healthy at the beginning of the Rangers series, perhaps the Flyers could have moved on.
Philadelphia lost to New York in seven games, but Mason stood on his head to keep the Flyers alive throughout the battle, including a 34-save performance in Game 6 at Wells Fargo Center in a 5-2 victory for the Flyers. Mason’s outstanding performance earned him an ovation from the crowd, as they stood on their feet and chanted the goaltender’s name, and Mason saluted them back with a raised goalie stick.
While the Flyers could not defeat the Rangers despite another stellar performance in Game 7 in a heartbreaking 2-1 loss, Mason had well solidified himself as the alpha male in the Philadelphia net and proved he could help lead a team. For his tremendous efforts that season, he finished 7th in Vezina Trophy voting, a nod to how fantastic his play was that year.
Mason’s 2014-15 campaign was marred by injuries, as he only appeared in 51 contests while working through knee and back troubles, and his time away from the ice really hurt the Flyers. Mason posted just an 18-18-11 record that season, as the Flyers defensively were one of the worst teams in the league and lacked solid, consistent depth in their forward group. His peripheral statistics were phenomenal, as he sported a .928 SV% and 2.25 GAA, along with 3 shutouts. Mason’s save percentage was good enough for third in the entire league among goalies with at least 30 games played, only behind Devan Dubnyk’s .929, and Vezina and Hart winner Carey Price’s .933. His goals against average in that same group ranked seventh, only behind Price (1.93), Dubnyk (2.07), Pekka Rinne (2.18), Cam Talbot (2.21), Braden Holtby (2.22), and Jonathan Quick (2.24). In short, he had a spectacular 2014-15 when healthy. His .928 SV% that year even ended up as the third-highest save percentage in a single season by a Philadelphia netminder, just behind Hall of Famer Bernie Parent’s .932 in 1973-74 and Doug Favell’s .931 in 1967-68.
When Mason wasn’t on the ice playing, the Flyers had a combined 15-13-7 record with an .891 SV% and 2.98 GAA between backup Ray Emery and Phantoms recall Rob Zepp. The pair also didn’t record a single shutout either, and it ended up being the last NHL season for both of them. Mason’s stellar play may have even kept the Flyers from finishing in the running for Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, as he helped earn them the seventh pick in the draft instead, which the Flyers used on Ivan Provorov.
Heading into 2015-16, general manager Ron Hextall saw how disastrous his goaltending behind Mason was and got him some much-needed help. Philadelphia signed former Capitals second-round pick Michal Neuvirth to a two-year contract after he had played with the Sabres and Islanders the season before. Neuvirth was viewed as someone who was good when healthy, but was often injured. Hextall believed he would be a suitable candidate to back up Mason, and he was correct, at least for the first season of the deal. Mason struggled out of the gate, failing to earn a victory until October 21st in a come-from-behind victory over Boston in relief of Neuvirth. He was shaky early in his appearance, but he made a momentum-shifting desperation save on David Pastrnak on the goal line and the Flyers stormed back behind goals from Wayne Simmonds and Claude Giroux, including a one-time bullet on the power play from the captain in overtime to win it.
Mason and Neuvirth would split starting duties at times over the course of the season whenever the latter could stay healthy, but Mason remained the #1 goalie in most stretches. In February, Neuvirth suffered an injury that kept him out from the 2nd until the 13th when he played in an overtime loss at home to the New Jersey Devils. It was only his 22nd game of the season at that point. He went on to play in nine of the next ten games for Philadelphia. Neuvirth then sat for the next five in favor of Mason before playing in a 3-2 road victory against Chicago during the Flyers’ crucial run to the playoffs, and then he suffered another lower-body injury and the Flyers announced on March 20th that it would force him out of action for three weeks.
In spite of one of the biggest problems the Flyers were now facing, Mason stood tall and kept the playoff hopes of Flyers fans and players alive. He would start 12 consecutive games from March 19th until April 9th, where he helped the Flyers clinch the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference with a 19-save performance at home in a 3-1 win over Pittsburgh to set up a date with the Washington Capitals in the first round of the playoffs. Mason and the Flyers had only gone 6-4-2 in that stretch, but he recorded a .922 save percentage and 2.13 goals against average during the span, almost single-handedly putting the team on his back en route to a playoff berth.
Of course, Mason couldn’t replicate his magic in the playoffs, as he suffered dreadfully against the Capitals in round one, playing well at times early in the series but began to fall apart in Game 2, capped off by Jason Chimera’s infamous center-ice deflection that squeaked through the legs of Mason and into the net. Sadly enough, that goal would stand as the game-winner, and with Mason in net the Flyers would eventually fall behind 0-3 in the series before turning to Neuvirth in Game 4. With Neuvirth in net, the Flyers almost made a tremendous comeback in the series.
They squeezed through Games 4 and 5 behind Neuvirth’s miraculous play, including a 44-save shutout on the road in the fifth game. In Game 6, the Philadelphia backup was stupendous once again, but the Flyers could not score on Capitals star goaltender Braden Holtby and lost the series on home ice. Not totally lost to some people in all of this was the success of Mason to even put them in position to make the playoffs. He capped off his season with a .918 SV% and 2.51 GAA, similar stats to his first full season with the Flyers.
With the 2016-17 season coming up, Mason tried to reaffirm himself as the #1 goaltender, and he seemed to be so, but it was quite the roller-coaster of a season for the Flyers. Another lackadaisical start to a season put the team in a hole, as they went 4-5-1 in the month of October, and only started 5-5-2 in November before they eventually rattled off a 10-game winning streak spanning from November 27th to December 14th. It was the longest winning streak the Flyers had completed since 1985. During the winning streak, Mason won eight straight starts, the most by a Flyer goaltender since Ron Hextall won nine straight in 1996-97. Mason also clinched the NHL’s 1st Star of the Week on December 5th after posting a 4-0-0 record, 1.71 GAA, and .945 SV% in that seven-day stretch.
Unfortunately, the strong play of Mason and the Flyers would not hold up. After Philadelphia’s winning streak came to an end with a 3-1 road loss to the Dallas Stars on December 17th, they would finish the rest of the season on a 20-23-7 run after piling up a 19-10-3 record after their 10th consecutive win on December 14th against the Colorado Avalanche. The terrible stretch snowballed into a 39-33-10 overall record, bad enough for sixth place in the Metropolitan and 11th overall in the East. Mason finished his season with a 26-21-8 record, 2.66 GAA and .908 SV%, his worst save percentage in any season in Philadelphia, and worst overall since 2013 with the Blue Jackets (.899 in 13 games).
Mason also finished the season on an expiring contract and the Flyers never made him another offer. Ron Hextall had already extended Neuvirth on March 1st near the trade deadline for two additional seasons through 2018-19, despite Neuvirth having an .887 SV% at the time of the extension being signed, which was quite literally the worst save percentage in the NHL at that point among qualified goalies.
Despite reaching 104 wins in a Flyers uniform and becoming one of the top netminders in franchise history, the writing was on the wall: Steve Mason would no longer be playing hockey as a Philadelphia Flyer.
On July 1st, 2017, Mason signed a 2-year contract with the Winnipeg Jets, and that was the beginning of the end to his NHL career. After a season in Winnipeg marred by injuries and poor play, his contract was traded to Montréal on June 30th, 2018, and the Canadiens placed him on buyout waivers. Mason never touched a sheet of professional ice ever again, and quietly retired.
While he never gets the respect he deserves, Steve Mason will go down as one of the greatest goaltenders in Philadelphia Flyers history. He ranks third in games played (231), third in wins (104), second in save percentage (.918), fourth in goals against average (2.47), fourth in saves (6,074), and fifth in shutouts (14). He did all of this while playing in an era of Flyers hockey that can only be described as one of the most turbulent we’ve experienced, and it was certainly a dark time in franchise history despite a couple surprise playoff appearances.
So today, we salute Steve Mason, for being a bright spot on a team where goalies seemingly come to die. He left the Philadelphia crease a lot better than how it was when he came here, and it’s time people look back and respect his performance here.
