Despite having the worst goaltending in the NHL last season, the Philadelphia Flyers are reaping the benefits of their patience with the goalie position so far.
This patience dates back to the 2023-24 season, Danny Briere’s first as Flyers GM, when the organization had to deal with the unexpected loss of Carter Hart whilst turning the keys over to the inexperienced Sam Ersson the minute he started showing flashes of being an NHL-caliber goalie.
Instead of panicking, Briere and the Flyers stayed the course, riding out the storm, dropping out of playoff position, and opting to go with in-house options like Felix Sandstrom and Cal Petersen.
Plus, Ivan Fedotov came over at the very end of the year, and the Flyers were able to begin assessing him.
So, while the Flyers ultimately missed the playoffs and threw a once-promising year in the trash, they did end up with a higher draft pick than they would have ordinarily gotten, which ended up becoming Jett Luchanko at the end of the day.
Coming into a 2024-25 season with similarly low expectations, the Flyers again followed the path ahead of them with Fedotov, Ersson, and rookie Aleksei Kolosov.
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It didn’t work, no, but Fedotov (and everyone else’s) failures put the Flyers in a position to draft Porter Martone in June.
Then, Fedotov, a 2015 seventh-round pick, was swapped for a 2026 sixth-round pick in Sunday’s surprise trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets without Briere and Co. retaining a penny of his $3.275 million cap hit.
Briere obviously wasn’t going to go into the 2025-26 season with the same dire straits in goal, which is why Dan Vladar was signed to play alongside Ersson.
Kolosov, apparently, is back in the fold and should be the team’s de facto No. 3 goalie going forward.
That’s important because the Belarusian goalie is still just 23 and can glean some valuable development playing a significant amount in the AHL in addition to whatever NHL time comes his way.
If Kolosov doesn’t work out, fine. The Flyers have him under contract for this season only, and Carson Bjarnason, who is only now turning pro, is waiting in the wings behind him.
In a few years, Egor Zavragin will be aboard this ship, too.
So, while Fedotov’s two-year, $6.55 million contract was heavily criticized at the time, it didn’t cost the Flyers anything but time that they needed to use to evaluate the team as a whole anyway.
The 28-year-old Russian went through a lot to realize his dream of playing in the NHL with the Flyers, and the Flyers were happy to oblige, even at a price that many considered obscene.
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Now, Ersson is in the last year of his contract, and Vladar was only brought in on a two-year deal.
The Flyers are fortunate to say they have no long-term commitments in goal and remain fully flexible heading into the future.
If one or both of Kolosov and Ersson can’t get going this season, the Flyers can start drafting more goalies with Bjarnason and Zavragin hitting their early 20s. That process just starts over again, that’s all.
Many would probably consider the Flyers fortunate to get more back from Fedotov than what they even spent to draft him a decade ago, but Briere and Co. earned their luck with their patience if so.
And, this sixth-round pick isn’t a throwaway.
Seattle Kraken starting goalie Joey Daccord was drafted (199th) in the same round as Fedotov (188th) in 2015, and Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf was drafted 214th overall in the 2019 draft.
The Flyers drafted Roddy Ross, who just finished four years of playing in USports, over Wolf that year, so that’s strike two for this example.
But, the point is that, if the Flyers can nail their draft picks, it can matter a whole lot. By staying patient with Fedotov and themselves, they earned another chance at making something like that happen, which can change the entire course of this rebuild.
The Flyers’ front office deserves major props so far, even if the short-term results haven’t been very good.
