Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson certainly hasn’t had it easy. Thrust into the starting spot midseason in 2023-24 while still getting his feet wet in the NHL, he has been the undisputed number one since then. But head coach John Tortorella indicated this weekend to reporters including Jordan Hall of NBC Sports Philadelphia that the team is hoping they’ll be able to deploy him in more of a tandem role when their goaltending situation is finalized. The hope was that Ivan Fedotov would be the other part of that platoon but he has struggled in his first full season in North America, as has youngster Aleksei Kolosov, calling into question if Ersson’s long-term platoon partner is either further away or outside the organization altogether.
More from around the NHL:
- The daily transactions from Pittsburgh continue. Per the AHL transactions log, the Penguins have once again brought up winger Matt Nieto and defenseman Sebastian Aho from AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on an emergency basis. While the Pens aren’t obligated to keep shuffling the players back and forth on off days, doing so allows them to pause their respective waiver clocks each time they send them down. Even with it being past the trade deadline, once they’re up for 30 days or play in 10 games, they’d have to get through waivers again to go back to the minors.
- Following the recent acknowledgment that contract talks for Sharks winger Nikolai Kovalenko won’t start until after the season, Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News wonders if the 25-year-old will be in San Jose’s plans moving forward. Since returning from a lower-body injury earlier this month, he’s only logging 11 minutes a game and was healthy scratched on Saturday. With San Jose getting a look at some other players, it’s possible that they could determine that he’s not the right fit moving forward while his arbitration eligibility could also be a dissuading factor. Kovalenko will be owed a qualifying offer of just under $814K and has 17 points in 49 games this season.
When all three of your generally decently-touted goalies stink, you might need to look at the goaltending coaching and defense. I don’t think either are quite good in this case.
Fedotov has been better than Ersson since the Four Nations break. Ersson’s being absolutely dreadful since then. He gives up one or two bad goals a game.
Prospects:
Yegor Zavragin [KHL] 19yrs old
Matej Tomek [Chechia} 27 yrs old
Carson Bjarnason [WHL] 19 yrs old