Dan Vladar has been lights-out for the Flyers this season, posting a .906 Save Percentage and a 2.59 GAA through 16 starts, good for top-20 marks league-wide and making him the clear No. 1 ahead of Samuel Ersson.
Heading into that December 7 home tilt against the Colorado Avalanche (who sit at 20-2-6 and are basically unstoppable), he was the logical choice to give Philly a fighting chance. Instead, Flyers’ Head Coach Rick Tocchet opted for Sam Ersson, who stepped up with 29 saves on 32 shots in a respectable 3-2 loss, but the Flyers coughed up three Power Play goals and couldn’t crack Colorado’s third-stringer Trent Miner.
Vladar had just come off a rough 5-1 loss to Pittsburgh on December 1 (where he still made 28/33 saves and wasn’t the real culprit), but with three days’ rest and his track record against high-octane offenses, it’s hard to argue he wouldn’t have stolen that one.
Tocchet’s rotation philosophy is all about workload management for Vladar (Apparently), but against a juggernaut like the Avs? Vladar was the play, there is little doubt the Flyers could have stolen at least a point. Ersson clearly saw two out of the three Avs goals, and those have been routine saves fur Vladar this season.
So why did Ersson really start? “He played good the last game. I thought he deserved it,” Tocchet said, in regards to starting Ersson over Vladar. To me it actually indicates that the Flyers, simply do not, or refuse to admit that they have a true number one netminder.
Yes, the season, technically, Is still young, but Flyers miss playoffs by a point. This is one game they will circle back to, as a “What if”
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