Taking one last look at the Philadelphia Flyers' offseason and looking ahead to what should be a 2025-26 campaign of growth for this young hockey team, Sean McIndoe of The Athletic gave a hilarious one-liner to describe the summer: "Fixed the goaltending with Dan Vladar."
Yep, you read that one right. Dan Vladar is the answer to the goaltending woes that haunted the Flyers all of last season. If you remember it right, Vladar spent 2024-25 backing up then-rookie Dustin Wolf, who burst onto the scene as one of the better young netminders in hockey for the retooling Calgary Flames.
Vladar may look good in a backup role, but it's hard to imagine him coming to anyone's rescue, let alone a team that's still in rebuilding mode like the Flyers, even if their top six is starting to materialize. That said, who is there?
Dan Vladar may be the Philadelphia Flyers best option in 2025-26
It's not saying much if Vladar ultimately wrestles away the No. 1 job from the incumbent, Samuel Ersson. If anything, he's a stopgap who should take a back seat the second the Flyers solve their issues in the crease.
Vladar should at least deliver better results than what fans saw from Ivan Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov, neither of whom finished with a save percentage better than an 0.880 or a GAA higher than 3.15. And Ersson, didn't fare much better with an 0.883 save percentage and a 3.14 GAA. But at least he recorded two shutouts.
Meanwhile, Vladar finished with an 0.898 save percentage and a 2.87 GAA, plus two shutouts with the Flames. But he's going from a middle-of-the-pack team to one trying to scratch and claw its way out of the Metropolitan's basement. That will be a challenge in and of itself.
Goaltending the X-Factor for the Philadelphia Flyers?
McIndoe also wrote, "But this team will go as far as their goaltending can carry them, and even with some regression away from “historically awful,” it’s still hard to see Vladar, Samuel Ersson and friends being enough to keep them in the playoff race for long."
For a team in transition, it's hard to tell. But if Trevor Zegras picks it up for the Flyers in the top six, Matvei Michkov takes another much-needed step, and if Tyson Foerster and Travis Konecny keep trending north, it makes more sense to say the top six is as much of an X-Factor as the goaltending.
That unit has scoring potential and could take pressure off of Vladar and Ersson, assuming they're the dynamic duo in all 82 games. If the top six falters or shows inconsistency, then McIndoe's take is 1,000 percent accurate. For the Flyers and their fans, that could be bad news.