Why it’s too soon for Flyers to give up on Sam Ersson

The numbers aren\'t sparkling. Across parts of three NHL seasons, Sam Ersson has an .888 save percentage (SV%), 2.98 goals against average (GAA), and a minus-23 goals saved above expected (GSAx, according to MoneyPuck) through his career with the Flyers. Sure, the team has been bad through most of that span, but those are worrying numbers any way you slice it, and the 2024-25 season was Ersson\'s worst: in 47 games, he finished with an .883 SV% and 3.14 GAA, and the worst GSAx in the league with minus-19.9.

It\'s good to remember, though, that Sam Ersson is just 25 years old. A player\'s mid-20s are often considered their prime, and Ersson\'s age falls in that range, but the 2024-25 season has shown just how much later goaltenders develop than skaters--especially as the game\'s gotten more intense and 60-plus game starters have gotten fewer and further between. Last season, a surprising number of goaltenders had breakout years at exactly the same age. They\'re not starting netminders, exactly, but they did establish themselves as very good tandem goalies. Before we get into those 1As, we need to clarify what makes a starting goaltender.

The True Starters

Generally speaking, you know if a guy is a workhorse early in their career--Andrei Vasilevskiy, for example, played over 50 games at 22 (his third NHL season), and 65 the following year. Connor Hellebuyck played 56 games as a 23-year old sophomore, and 67 the following season. That player archetype is fading as much of the league moves towards tandems, though finding a goalie who can play that much (and be good!) is still quite the commodity.

Not every starter hits the league as young as Hellebuyck and Vasilevskiy, either. Ilya Sorokin joined the New York Islanders at age 25, and Igor Shesterkin joined the New York Ragners at 24--both had their first 50-game seasons at age 26. They did, of course, have outstanding KHL careers before coming to North America, so there was a high likelihood their abilities would translate to an NHL starting role. Juuse Saros has been in the league since he was 20, but he didn\'t play over 50 games until he was 26--and that season he played 67. The path to NHL starting goaltender isn\'t linear, and that\'s without accounting for where some of these goalies were drafted.

With all that in mind, it seems likely that a 25-year-old Ersson isn\'t a true starting NHL goaltender--those kinds of players are few and far between. Writing him off entirely, however, is premature. There\'s still a path for him to establish himself as a 1A tandem goaltender, even if being a good 1B is the more likely outcome. As the league moves towards tandems, having a guy come up through your system to fill either role should be viewed as a success. So, what age should we view as the \"make or break\" year for Ersson?

The Age to Engage

Looking around the league this season, it seems that 27/28 is the age most goaltenders establish themselves as part of a tandem, whether as a 1A or a 1B. All of MacKenzie Blackwood, Sam Montembault, Joey Daccord, Adin Hill, Karel Vejmelka, Connor Ingram, and Logan Thompson finished the 2024-25 regular season at age 28; a couple of them turned 28 midseason, others are summer birthdays and were 28 for the duration. With the exception of Ingram, who I\'m including because he was trending the right way in 2023-24 and had a down year due to heartbreaking circumstances , all of these goalies have established themselves as--at the very least--very good tandem goalies. Four of them earned lucrative new contracts this year, too, with each deal carrying annual average values between $4.75- and $5.85-million.

Averaged together, all seven of the goalies listed had a .903 SV% through the regular season, and the only one who fell below .900 was Ingram with an .882 SV%. MacKenzie Blackwood played for two teams in 2024-25, but only his time with Colorado was included as that\'s the team he finished the season with (though a .909 SV% behind that San Jose Sharks team is nothing to shake a stick at). That\'s about as league average as you can ask for, across the board, and Vejmelka, Ingram, and Daccord all played on teams that missed the playoffs, while Montembault\'s Canadiens just squeaked into the playoffs and lost in five games to the Washington Capitals. A slightly more competitive team in front of any of those four and you\'re cooking with gas, and Utah managed to keep their playoff hopes alive down to the last week of the season.

Going back a couple years, you\'ve got a goalie like Linus Ullmark, who played a career high 41 games his first year in Boston in his age--you guessed it--28 season. Goalies in the conversation to fill a 1A or starting role include Filip Gustavsson and Jeremy Swayman; both will be 27 next season, and Swayman should bounce back with a proper training camp and none of the contract shenanigans management put him through. Even the much-maligned Stuart Skinner won\'t be 27 until November, and there\'s been enough good play to think he can become a solid tandem guy--though letting him figure it out through the prime of Connor McDavid is certainly a choice.

Past Performances

What were all these goalies doing in their age-25 seasons, which is where Ersson was at in 2024-25? In many cases, they weren\'t much better--and a few were far worse off.

MacKenzie Blackwood dealt with injury throughout his time in New Jersey, and his age-25 season was no different: in 2021-22, he played 25 games and had an .892 SV%; the following year, in 22 games, he had an .893--a far cry from the success he\'s having in Colorado this year. Sam Montembault finished the 2021-22 season with an .891 SV% in 38 games with the Canadiens. Karel Vejmelka\'s first NHL season was at age 25, and he played 52 games in 2021-22 for the defunct Arizona Coyotes, posting a .898 SV% in the process. With those same Coyotes, Connor Ingram played 27 games at age 25 (a year younger than Vejmelka, so the 2022-23 season) and posted a .907 SV%.

Adin Hill is an interesting case, as he showed some promise as a young goaltender. He\'d been a solid backup for a few seasons and, at 25, he posted a .906 SV% in 25 games with the San Jose Sharks. The following year, he played with Logan Thompson on the Vegas Golden Knights en route to a Stanley Cup; 2022-23 was Thompson\'s age-25 season, and he posted a respectable .915 SV% in 37 games for the Knights. That\'s the highest save percentage of the goalies used in this exercise, but having the Cup-winning team in front of you absolutely juices a goaltender\'s numbers.

Perhaps the most striking example is Joey Daccord: from 2018-23, he played a grand total of 19 NHL games and posted an average save percentage of .881 across all those seasons. Barely an NHLer most of his career, Daccord went on to play 50 games for the Seattle Kraken at 27 in 2023-24 and put up a .916 SV%. He came out of nowhere and usurped Philipp Grubauer as the Kraken\'s netminder of the future, though that\'s a low bar considering Grubauer hasn\'t had a save percentage over .900 since signing with Seattle.

Where This Leaves the Flyers

There\'s mounting evidence that, in the modern NHL, the age 27/28 seasons of goaltenders are the start of their \"peak\" years, with the exception of elite starters who put it together earlier and, often, for longer. As fans, we need to recalibrate what age constitutes a player\'s \"prime\" when it comes to goaltenders--and that includes Sam Ersson, though we\'ll come back to him in a moment.

This age consideration also means that, as exciting as the Flyers\' goalie prospects are, we\'re probably quite a few years away from seeing them in their primes: both of Yegor Zavragin and Carson Bjarnason are still 19, and don\'t turn 20 until this summer. Unless one of them turns out to be an elite starter, it\'s possible we won\'t see them at their best until the 2032-33 season, which doesn\'t even feel like a real year yet. Zavragin\'s got the potential to be a starter, but he\'s got two years remaining on his current KHL contract. Plus, if he follows a path similar to other Russian stars like Sorokin and Shesterkin, he may not arrive until he\'s 24 or 25--that\'s the 2029-30 season at the earliest.

For now and the immediate future, this is Sam Ersson\'s job to lose (barring any additions from the outside). While Ersson\'s results have been underwhelming so far, the 25-year old has runway left to develop if we view 27 as the start of a goaltender\'s prime years. It even gives 23-year old Aleksei Kolosov, who was even worse than Ersson last season, quite a bit of time to try and put it together. The Flyers would do well to resist the urge to jettison their young netminders, because plenty of time remains for them to prove they\'ve got the chops to stick as quality NHL goaltenders. Giving up on Sam Ersson now would be a tremendous mistake and, given the point the franchise is at, they have little to lose by keeping him.

Goalie stats courtesy Hockey Reference and Money Puck

Talking Points