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Aleksei Kolosov stumbles in first weekend back with Phantoms

Aleksei Kolosov re-debuts with the Phantoms, but still struggles through some growing pains.

Posted on by Madeline Campbell
Photo credit: JustSports / Lehigh Valley Phantoms

Things have been a little rough for the Phantoms on the goaltending front through the first half of the season. They’ve gotten some good performances from their starters, there’s no denying that, and that has made it feel like an even bigger blow when they lost not one but two of them — both Eetu Makiniemi and Cal Petersen — to long term injuries.

But the Phantoms got some much needed reinforcements ahead of this weekend’s three-in-three, with Aleksei Kolosov being assigned back to the AHL and giving the goaltending tandem (which was comprised of a pair of ECHL call-ups) a much needed boost.

And it’s been a bit of a strange season for Kolosov as well — he was needed at times as an injury fill-in at the NHL level, but when everyone was healthy again and the three-goalie rotation returned, he pretty quickly found himself as the third player in that rotation, and barely playing as a result. With that in mind, a return to the AHL seemed like it would be a win for him as well, as he would get to play a bunch with a team that he found a reasonable bit of success with early in the season, and he could work to rebuild his game, and his confidence, and get more ready for the next time he’s called upon with the NHL squad.

That aim, in the big picture, is still the same, but this journey began with a hiccup in its first pair of games. Kolosov got the start in Friday’s matchup against Springfield, and that was a game that pretty quickly went sideways on the Phantoms. Their energy dropped off after a good start, and the attention to detail and puck management was so poor that the 5-1 loss felt pretty deserved, as did their head coach’s comments afterwards that he didn’t like a single one of his players’ games.

And while the skaters certainly didn’t make things easy for Kolosov, between the puck mismanagement in front of him and the number of penalty kills they put themselves on, but Kolosov’s individual play did leave something to be desired. There were a few of the goals that feel tough to pin on him — a breakaway, a two-on-one, a skater left wide open on the back door — but then there were ones like this, where he was beaten pretty cleanly from a distance.

And this one, where he got himself square to the shooter, but had the puck just trickle through five-hole.

Kolosov then got the night off on Saturday, backing up Parker Gahagen against Bridgeport, but they went right back to him for the weekend finale on Sunday in Wilkes-Barre. And that game, too, didn’t go great for them. The Phantoms struggled once again and ended up losing this one, too, by a 5-1 score. And while Kolosov had a few big moments in this game — his penalty shot stop stands out — he still didn’t look his absolute sharpest.

The killer in this one really was the penalty kill, which has not been very good all weekend, but Kolosov seemed to equally struggle, independent of the difficult positions the skaters were creating. That is, Kolosov struggled with his reads in traffic, and shots from distance, even with not an overwhelming amount of traffic in front of him, and those shots from the perimeter were giving him some trouble.

The fifth Penguins goal of the game (which also sealed a hat trick for Emil Bemstrom) was a tough one too, as Kolosov again got himself over in time to square up to the shot, but didn’t seal up his post well enough to keep the puck from sneaking in on him.

Now, even with all of this taken in, we want to be careful here not to catastrophize — this was a bad weekend for the whole of the team, and it was going to be difficult for any goaltender to find a lot of success, much less one coming down from the Flyers and having to shake off some rust from not playing a whole lot over these last few weeks. It’s going to be a bit of a process for Kolosov to get reacclimated with the team, and he’s going to need a bit of grace while he does that. But with the game schedule lightening up a bit ahead of the All-Star break, with a bit of practice time, and a bit more time to mentally reset, here’s hoping that he’ll come out on the other side of it a little more steady. The Phantoms certainly need him to.

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