It is a tale as old as time when it comes to the Philadelphia Flyers.
The team has promising talent up front that can put the puck in the net, create scoring chances, and excite the crowd, as well as a defense that does everything it can to try and help the team win hockey games consistently. Together, these two areas of their game combine to put forth good efforts on a nightly basis.
As always, it is the club’s goaltending that is a problem. Year in and year out, the team does not get the consistent goaltending it needs to put themselves in a good position to play meaningful hockey games and get into a Stanley Cup playoff spot in a very competitive Eastern Conference.
Simply put, the team’s goaltending has been abysmal this season. This area of their game is one of the main reasons why the team currently finds themselves in last place in the Metropolitan Division, second to last place in the Eastern Conference, and 28th in the league with a record of 28-35-9 for 65 points.
For starters, it does not help that the team is without goaltender Carter Hart. Hart, 26, left the Flyers in January of 2024 because he was charged with sexual assault along with four other members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior Hockey Team.
Before leaving the Flyers during the 2023-24 season, Hart had been providing the team with good enough goaltending to at least give them a chance to sneak into the playoffs. In 25 games last season, Hart was 12-9-0-1 with a 2.80 goals-against average, a .906 save percentage, and one shutout.
While those numbers are not exactly electric, they are pretty good considering he played behind a very weak Flyers defense. He faced a lot of shots on a nightly basis and did a solid job of keeping the Flyers in games they had no business being in.
The same cannot be said of the team’s goaltending this season. As of this writing (Tuesday night, March 25), the Flyers are 29th in the league in goals allowed as they have given up 244 goals in 72 games, which means they are allowing between three and four goals per game (3.39)
The team has used three goaltenders this season and all of them have struggled to help their team win consistently. Not only have they not been able to win a lot of hockey games, but none of them have been able to fully take hold of the crease and be the team’s starter.
Samuel Ersson has played the most games out of the team’s three goaltenders this season. He is currently (As of Tuesday night, March 25) 19-14-0-5 with a 3.00 goals-against average, a .886 save percentage and two shutouts.
While there have been games where Ersson, 25, has looked more than capable of being a starting goaltender in the NHL, there have been others where he has looked lost. He allows a lot of soft goals, has had difficulty in coming up with a big save when his team needs one the most, and has trouble controlling rebounds.
Ivan Fedotov has started 22 games for the Flyers this season and has been even worse. Fedotov, 28, is currently (As of Tuesday night, March 25) 5-13-0-3 with a 3.21 goals-against average and a .877 save percentage.
For someone who is 6’7”, Fedotov certainly does not play big when he is in between the pipes. He does not play his angles well, and he gets beat on shots that he should be able to stop at this level.
The club’s third goaltender, Aleksei Kolosov, should not be playing in the NHL right now as it is clear that he needs more seasoning down in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Kolosov, 23, is currently (As of Tuesday night, March 25) 4-8-0-1 with a 3.45 goals-against average and a .870 save percentage.
While Kolosov is very agile and will make some incredible saves, he often seems to have trouble finding his place in the net. This leads to a lot of goals being scored on him.
If the Flyers had better goaltending, there is no reason why they would not be fighting for a playoff spot right now. Instead, the team’s inconsistent and often shaky goaltending is going to cause the team to miss the playoffs once again and force the team’s management to take a hard look at what needs to be done to fix this ongoing problem that plagues their crease.
ITR 40: Headed For A Repeat? – Inside The Rink
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