One of the major undoings for the Philadelphia Flyers last season was their goaltending. With some of the worst numbers in that department in the league, a promising campaign turned a corner at the final hour, and the Flyers just barely missed out on playoff hockey. With some new names in 2024-25, the situation could be much better this time around. But how?
The Flyers’ Goaltending Can Only Improve
Recently, I talked about how the Flyers’ league-worst power play last season took about 20 goals off of the board for them had they just been average (which is more or less a 20 percent conversion rate). Similarly, the goaltending hampered their potential—they had one of the best defenses in the NHL.
Related: Matvei Michkov Can Take Flyers’ Power Play to the Next Level
While the Flyers’ between-the-pipes play isn’t literally destined to be better, it is likely that they see improvement. Perhaps, that could be drastic. They allowed the seventh-fewest expected goals in the NHL (234.85), meaning that, with average netminders, they would have theoretically given up right around 235 goals. However, they allowed 258—a whole 23.15 more than expected. Combined with a futile man advantage, the team was crushed.
Following Jan. 18, the Orange and Black had the sixth-best defense in the league in terms of expected goals. The only issue was that they had a .852 save percentage (SV%), allowing four to six more goals per 100 shots than basically every team in the NHL. Goaltending (among other things, of course) effectively cost Philadelphia a chance at the playoffs, as the team lost nine of their last 11 contests and was eliminated in a down-to-the-wire race on April 16.
While the Flyers are running it back with a few of the same faces, that’s not as bad as it sounds. There’s some room for growth here, aside from the fact that their overall .884 team SV% seems unsustainable.
For starters, let’s get to the Flyers’ major goaltenders. Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov are almost surely the two men who will guard the net for the duration of the season, barring injuries or incompetence.
Ersson is the clear-cut starter here, and he’s an interesting case. On one hand, the 24-year-old was excellent for a decent portion of his 2023-24 campaign. From Nov. 3 to Jan. 18, he was one of the best in the business, posting a .930 SV%, 1.82 goals-against average (GAA), a 12-3-2 record, and allowing 14.63 fewer goals than expected in…
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