Photo Credit: Our very own Chris Maher
Without question, the position that the Philadelphia Flyers’ organization has had the toughest time both drafting and developing over the last two decades is goaltending. In today’s NHL, it is no secret that in order to truly compete over the course of the long, arduous season (that currently has teams traveling more than ever) there is an increased need for teams to have more than one goalie. Long gone are the days of a team’s top netminder playing 70+ games a year. Most clubs are now operating on more of a goalie-by-committee, like the New York Islanders do with the veteran Semyon Varlamov and the promising Ilya Sorokin. Or like the Vancouver Canucks now have in the young Thatcher Demko and Jaroslav Halak.
While stats would tend to prove both the Flyers’ defense and goaltending to be absolutely horrid last season, general manager Chuck Fletcher went out this summer and improved both. But while Philadelphia thinks that Martin Jones, (whom the team signed for this season for $2 million dollars) maybe a temporary solution to this problem, many people around the league- including former Flyers’ goaltender Mike McKenna- wonder if his signing will even be enough, seeing that McKenna had the team’s new tandem ranked as the 27th best duo in the league heading into this season.
There’s no doubt that the team’s revamped defense should help but even with Jones acting as a stop gap of sorts (for now) what do they have coming up the pike for reinforcements? For some time, the team has been trying to build up depth in their system in-net. This has led to the team now having an exorbitant amount of overvalued goalie prospects that are currently signed and blocking other, more promising, ones within the team’s system from advancing. If you exclude the team’s failed experiments who have already departed from Philly (Anthony Stolarz, Alex Lyon and Roddy Ross, and the failing 2017 3rd round pick Kirill Ustimenko- who currently holds an embarrassing .625 save percentage for the club’s East Coast Hockey League (ECHL affiliate: The Reading Royals), the Flyers’ top goaltender prospect right now is:
Felix Sandström– the 24-year-old Swedish goaltender who the team drafted way back in the 3rd round of 2015 currently plays on the team’s American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate the Lehigh Valley Phantoms where, despite losing both contests he has played in thus far this season, he holds a respectable 2.05 goals against average (GAA) with a .937 save percentage (SV%). Not bad, right? But my question is: Just how much credit for those numbers should go to him and how much should go to the team’s wealth of talent on defense? With Cameron York, Egor Zamula, Wyatte Wylie, Linus Högberg, and Mason Millman all playing for the Phantoms now, that kind of depth on defense should be enough to make any young goaltender look like Dominik Hasek. To put it into perspective: Last season, Felix averaged a 3.19 GAA and a .903 SV% in 11 games played for the Phantoms when players like York were still playing back at the University of Michigan for the majority of the season.
To further speculate on just how accurate the depiction these numbers of Sandström’s are actually worth to the organization, I would urge you to look to the Flyers’ 2018 5th round pick Samuel Ersson’s similar statistics for the Phantoms this year: In his first game played this season Ersson (who was signed this year after only managing to win an anticlimactic 38% of the games he played in the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) last year) was able to post an impressive 2.07 GAA and a .913 SV% for the Phantoms. Although the league hasn’t updated the leagues stats just yet to include, Sunday night’s game vs the Wilks Barre/Scranton Penguins, they will not change his much, if at all.
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Before you render your verdict (however skewed it currently may be) of Ustimenko’s, Sandström’s, and Ersson’s games so far, just remember to keep in mind the defense that they’re playing behind is only masking their ineptitude. With these three questionable signings, there’s no doubt that the team has made it that much harder for promising goalie prospects Ivan Fedotov and newly drafted Alexsei Kolosov to be signed one day to the club’s roster.
Ivan Fedotov: 21-22 stats: KHL 12 GP: 1.90 GAA .934 SV% Record 7-5-0
Alexsei Kolosov: 21-22 stats: KHL 14 GP: 2.42 GAA .919 SV% Record 9-5-0
The stats above make evident that both of these players are currently having much success playing in Russia’s top league the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL: which is arguably the 2nd best league in the world) and deserve their own shot at coming to join the Flyers but lack the roster space to do so. Moving forward, the question on many fans’ minds should be “who will stay and who will go”? But for now, it should be safe to say that “more is better” may not always be accurate.
Nobody has ever confused Fletcher of managing cap and roster space well.