The Flyers have been chipping away at their remaining bits of business to allow their final roster to take shape, and after announcing a signing of veteran forward Garrett Wilson to a one-year deal on Sunday afternoon, they followed that up with the announcement that they’ve assigned goaltender Aleksei Kolosov to the AHL.
Roster update: We have loaned goaltender Aleksei Kolosov to the @LVPhantoms (AHL).
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) September 27, 2026
This will give the Phantoms their regular tandem of Kolosov and Carson Bjarnason back again, as they head into their final game of the preseason on Tuesday, and then their season opener on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Flyers sit with three goaltenders in their mix, regulars Dan Vladar and Joseph Woll, and then depth piece Yaniv Perets, who was signed to a Professional Tryout on Saturday.
Kolosov’s role
In the quickness of this move there is, as they say, a lot to unpack. On the one hand, it does seem in keeping with how the Flyers have handled the rest of their prospects who have been in some of these training camp battles, opting not to keep them hanging around on the NHL roster where they may be hoping to get in for some games in a depth rotation in favor of sending them down to get a much higher volume of minutes in the AHL. For Kolosov to continue working on his game, he needs consistent starts, and he’ll certainly get that down with the Phantoms.
But, on the other hand, it’s hard not to feel like his performance on Saturday against the Capitals has played into this decision. Because this was, in all, really quite a difficult showing for him — with five goals allowed on just 24 shots faced, Kolosov didn’t have perfect support in front of him, but he also had his own struggles, completely within his control, in that one, as he just never really seemed to be comfortable in his net and far too often had real trouble picking up even the more routine shots that were coming at him — ending in an impression from his head coach that “every time [the Capitals] shot, they scored.” It was a tough one to watch unfold, there’s no other way about it, and one has to wonder how much it affected his standing in the eyes of the management group, and the amount of runway he has left to work with.
The Dan Vladar of it all
Of course, the biggest bit of signaling in this move is towards good news on the front of Vladar. After taking an injury back in his first and only showing of the preseason against the Bruins, Vladar has been working his way back to health and game readiness, but the good news for the Flyers has been that this road was not going to be a particularly lengthy one. Having skated a bit at the end of the week, he seemed close to ready to make his return — and indeed, Danny Briere suggested in his media availability on Saturday night that, had that game been a meaningful one, Vladar might have been good enough to go them — and this move suggests that the prognosis for him is good. It’s still a few more days before this needs to be made official, but the apparent need to no longer keep Kolosov around as a just-in-case extra bodes well for Vladar’s readiness to, at the very least, back up for the Flyers, come opening night.
