Is Dan Vladar having the best Flyers goalie season of the last 10 years?

The Philadelphia Flyers, once written off and left for dead as recently as a week ago, have over a 50 percent chance of qualifying for the NHL postseason after Tuesday night’s win over the New Jersey Devils. The Flyers have taken advantage of a weird league year and are on the bubble for the first time in a few seasons.

There are a litany of reasons to be encouraged for the Flyers’ late season surge and their season in the aggregate even if the team doesn’t make the postseason. While worsening the team’s first round draft pick for a few culture wins late in the season might feel empty, the Flyers have accomplished a few organizational goals.

Although it hasn’t always been smooth, Matvei Michkov continues to inspire hope into the future, Trevor Zegras’ addition and subsequent transition to center has worked well, former first round pick Porter Martone signed his entry-level contract and joined the team and against all of that backdrop, Daniel Vladar has put up a remarkably solid season in net.

Coming into the 2025-26 NHL season, Vladar had never started more than 29 games in an NHL season. The veteran netminder had made 95 career starts across five seasons largely playing as a backup in both Boston and Calgary. For backups in tandems, it can be challenging to find their own net and launch themselves into a career as a starter.

With so few teams willing to commit to a backup jumping into a starter’s workload, it often requires a goaltender betting on themselves. Make no mistake about it, Vladar very easily could’ve crashed and burned this year with such a massive jump in playing time. Instead, the Flyers’ modest two-year contract with a $3.35-million AAV looks like one of the most shrewd moves of free agency.

This naturally begs the question, just how good has Vladar been this season in comparison to recent Flyers’ history?

To evaluate performance, we’ll home in on workload, Goals against average, save percentage and goals saved above expected. The various goaltenders’ win-loss record will be mentioned but aren’t a great evaluation of individual talent.

Workload

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Flyers’ goaltending situation has often mirrored the state of the team. It’s not a coincidence that in the team’s best goaltending season in six years, Philadelphia has its best chance to return to the playoffs.

When it comes to goaltenders, workload is an unavoidable component of the conversation. How often a goalie plays and how much they’re asked to do in their starts is important color for understanding the NHL’s most fickle position. Since goaltending is largely a product of its environment, only the best at the position are capable of consistently elevating above their team’s play.

As of the time of this writing, Vladar has made 48 starts with four regular season games remaining. Across the league, that’s 17th in the NHL this year. In the contemporary NHL, the days of a 60+ start goalie are long gone. Most teams, especially contenders, are going to carefully manage their starter’s workload to keep them in the ballpark of 55 starts to keep them as fresh as possible for the postseason.

While the Flyers would greatly benefit from Vladar playing more, the team’s other two goalies have a combined .848 save percentage in their 30 starts, there is a tipping point. Knowing exactly where that maximum workload efficiency is an integral component to team management and not pushing a player’s odometer too far.

Over the course of the last ten years, Vladar’s 48 starts, so far, is the fifth highest total. While that workload isn’t awe inspiring, it’s also some of the best in terms of results, which makes it all the more valuable.

The Quality of Work

It’s one thing to play often as a starting goalie. It’s entirely another endeavor to play it well. Poor Sam Ersson has made 122 starts over the last three seasons and mustered up an .882 save percentage in those games. That’s the crux of the issue for the goaltender position: play the goaltender as often as possible until they’re overexposed.

This year, Vladar has put up the NHL’s 15th best save percentage, 4th best goals against average and 15th best goals saved above expected, <a href=\"https://evolving-hockey.com/stats/goalie_standard/?_inputs_&std_gl_table=%22On-Ice%22&std_gl_team=%22All%22&std_gl_str=%22All%22&std_gl_adj=%22Score%20%26%20Venue%22&std_gl_range=%22Seasons%22&std_gl_span=%22Regular%22&std_gl_group=%22Team%2C%20Season%22&std_gl_age1=%2217%22&std_gl_age2=%2250%22&std_gl_dft_yr=%22All%22&std_gl_status=%22All%22&std_gl_info=%22No%22&std_gl_players=null&std_gl_fa=%2250%22\">according to Evolving-Hockey .

Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx): How many goals a goaltender concedes in relation to expected goals faced. Every scoring chance a goaltender faces has an associated expected goals value based on historical shot tracking data. The more goals saved above expected a goalie saves, the more important the quality of said goaltender’s work.

While 15th in both of the main categories that people point to in evaluating goaltenders, doesn\'t leap off the page in the context of 32 NHL starters, there’ve been 61 goaltenders across the league to make at least 20 starts, meaning that finishing in the top third of those statistical categories firmly establishes Vladar as a close to average NHL starter.

Now, it is worth noting that the league-wide save percentage across the board is the lowest it’s been in almost 30 years, meaning shooters are doing a better job of finishing their shots on goal. So, Vladar’s .907 might not jump off the page in comparison to year\'s past but, it’s pretty solid and better than goaltenders like Jake Oettinger, Connor Hellebuyck, Juuse Saros, Linus Ullmark, and Darcy Kuemper.

Goaltending is extremely fickle year to year and Vladar’s performance might prove to be an outlier. That this season was the perfect confluence of circumstances to yield career best numbers that can’t ever be captured again.

Across the last ten Flyer seasons, Vladar’s .907 save percentage is the team’s 7th best. While that might seem a touch underwhelming, it’s important to account that save percentages are down widely across the NHL. So, while it might not seem that impressive against the context of recent Flyers’ history, within the confines of its given season, it’s more than adequate, especially when considering the team’s alternatives.

But, getting into GAA and GSAx is where Vladar’s case as the best Flyers’ goalie season really holds up. The Czech goaltender has the second-best goals against average and the most Goals Save Above Expected of any Flyer goaltender over the last 10 years.

Player Season Games played GSAx Dan Vladar 2025-26 49 23.73 Carter Hart 2022-23 55 12.93 Carter Hart 2019-20 43 7.25 Felix Sandstrom 2021-22 5 4.02 Anthony Stolarz 2016-17 7 2.78 Sam Ersson 2022-23 12 2.29 Carter Hart 2023-24 26 1.91 Alex Lyon 2017-18 11 -0.56

Considering that taking every single Flyers goalie of the last 10 years, and it takes eight seasons to then get into the negative GSAx, is just an incredibly massive sign as to how bad it has been in a Philadelphia crease. And, with two of the top five seasons having goalies play under 10 games, is just a netminder stringing together some positive performances, but doesn\'t mean that they should\'ve been a starter that year, or anything.

What Vladar is doing is unheard of for the Flyers and he could finish the season having double the impact of the next-best season in a decade.

The Final Flourish

While Vladar is only first amongst recent Flyer goalies in Goals Saved Above expected, that stat’s value is arguably the highest of any category. For argument’s sake, if Vladar conceded nine more goals against, and the Flyers had conceded 238 goals against this season, they are almost certainly out of the playoff mix at this point.

Throw in the fact that Vladar has the most starts of any goalie in a potential winning season for the team and you really get a well-rounded resume. Not dominant in any stat other than the most important, average or so in a few, second in goals against all the while making more than half of the team’s possible starts.

Vladar isn’t going to get Vezina consideration, but his ability to jump into the mix for the first time as a starter and provide competent goaltending might be the single best signing of Danny Briere’s tenure.

Talking Points