The Philadelphia Flyers had a somewhat clear picture for what their blue line could look like to start the 2025-26 season. Defenseman Egor Zamula was a part of it, basically guaranteed the No. 5 role, but after some comments from head coach Rick Tocchet, we’re not so sure that could be the case.
All throughout training camp, Zamula never really popped off as a sure-fire NHL-caliber defenseman. Despite having just 155 career games under his belt and never being a permanent fixture in the top four, it almost felt like Zamula approached the preseason as someone who truly was a lock for a spot and therefore has been very lackadaisical during game action. Simply put, if the Flyers didn’t have their current mess of too many mediocre depth defenders like Noah Juulsen and Dennis Gilbert, Zamula would be much more of a target.
Most of the time, the general consensus with Zamula this preseason is that he’s inoffensive — he’s not ruining anything and his experience already on the team is just to be a youngish depth piece. Someone that just doesn’t add anything but doesn’t hurt a whole lot. That was until Thursday night.
In their penultimate preseason game against the New York Islanders, Zamula put in a terrible performance in just about every way. He looked even worse than before, there was never a puck that he could get to in time, the breakouts were messy; just an overall disappointing output. But then even diving deeper, Zamula was last among defensemen in terms of shot attempt share at 5-on-5, with the Flyers being out-attempted seven to 18 while the Russian blueliner was on the ice. In terms of actual shots, it still was a massive deficit as the Flyers were outshot three to seven.
After the game, Zamula’s name was brought up in Tocchet’s media availability, since everyone saw just how bad of a night he had.
“He’s got to pick it up. Yup. Definitely,” Tocchet said bluntly to the media after Thursday night’s game.
While we might be reading too much into eight words spoken after a disappointing preseason loss that ultimately doesn’t mean anything, it certainly feels like a comment that Tocchet doesn’t really want to expand any further on. Now, it could either mean he doesn’t want to expand any further because he will be dealing with Zamula’s terrible play more privately and that is something they will have to figure out, or the coach just knows that despite a bad game that he’s one of their only suitable options on that bottom pair to start the season.
And to be fair, it is also a group of defensemen trying to learn a new way to play.
Tocchet was also asked specifically how some defensemen are commenting how they are starting to get used to the new coach’s defensive system, but there were still some incredibly sloppy breakouts during the preseason game against the Islanders.
“There’s some good and some bad. We just have to clean that stuff up,” Tocchet said. “It’s a little risky. We have to understand when to do it and when not to — just can’t give odd-man rushes, things like that.”
So, maybe it’s just an entire blue line problem and the weakest link of that happens to be Zamula. But, man, there comes a point where you just want a better option to throw out there. With such a potentially important season lying ahead for the Flyers as they aim to take the next step in the rebuilding plan, it feels like a position that is the easiest to improve is just figuring out who are some decent depth defensemen and not ones that will regularly mess up or do nothing at all.
What does this mean for Zamula?
Rick Tocchet’s specific comments shouldn’t directly sway the Flyers front office’s decision to keep or throw away Egor Zamula. That would be a little silly. In the end, it’s a disappointing preseason from a player who most would have already projected to be on the blue line for most of the season. Maybe it really is just Zamula playing his “NHL Regular In The Preseason” card for the first time but taking it a little too far and truly looking bad.
But, if anything, this just shows everyone that there is still more positions up for grab. Rasmus Ristolainen will come back eventually but even then, that’s only five defensemen we can safely say should be in a regular spot when healthy. There is a blueliner rats nest of defensemen who we just want to be not noticeable in Zamula, Juulsen, Gilbert, and now Adam Ginning appears to be in there as well. While any of them can be in that bottom-pairing role, it’s not like any of them will be positively contributing to the Flyers winning hockey games in the end.
It leaves everyone in a little bit of a weird position and we guess the easiest thing to do is just for them to play out this entire season and for them to address that position next summer when they want to take an even further step towards contention.
Or, you know, they could recall Emil Andrae.
