The Philadelphia Flyers will be without their starting netminder for at least a week and their top center is possibly returning shortly.
According to The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz, netminder Sam Ersson’s injury is “nothing major” but the Flyers should expect him to be out for the next little bit. Additionally, Sean Couturier’s status has been upgraded to questionable and could possibly return as early as Saturday against the Buffalo Sabres.
Ersson missed a couple games last week after tweaking something against the Boston Bruins, which led to the duo of Aleksei Kolosov and Ivan Fedotov taking over netminding duties. He reaggravated the same injury in practice on Wednesday — forcing him to miss a scheduled start — and will miss another week or two.
It was a tepid start to the 2024-25 season for Ersson, with up and down results, but he’s rounded into form since shutting out the Bruins at the end of October. In the four games since (we are not including the seven minutes he played against Boston the second time), he has a .940 save percentage and a 1.75 goals against average. This is similar to last season, where Ersson had a lousy start but became one of the league’s best goaltenders for approximately three months before exhaustion and fatigue caught up to him. Given how important Ersson is to the team–and how shaky the goaltending behind him is–there’s no reason to push it when it comes to his health.
Now, about that goaltending behind him. The Flyers were quickly approaching an inflection point where they would’ve needed to make some serious roster decisions: Cam York’s nearly ready to return, and Jamie Drysdale won’t be far behind him, but Emil Andrae–and even Anthony Richard–have been playing too well to return to the AHL, and Kolosov may ask to be loaned back to Russia if he’s sent back to the Phantoms. Fedotov, meanwhile, was not playing well, but has two wins in a row and may actually be a serviceable backup. There are only so many roster spots to go around and, given how unpredictably Kolosov and Fedotov were playing, it seemed logical that one of them would be returned to Lehigh Valley.
The Flyers can, once again, kick that decision down the road. With Ersson out for at least a week, maybe two (watch for the backdated Injured Reserve placement in the coming days), the Flyers can run with a tandem of Fedotov and Kolosov; it’s an opportunity for both players to prove that they deserve to stick on the NHL roster. From a future-focused standpoint, Kolosov is obviously more important to the organization given his age and developmental runway–but Fedotov has more overall experience and may be the more reliable backup at the NHL level. Now’s the chance for these two tendies to show they’ve got NHL chops or, especially in Kolosov’s case, need some more refinement at the AHL level.
That brings us to Sean Couturier.
Going from supposedly a liability on this team to the top of the lineup, Sean Couturier now is driving play to the tune of an 58.37% expected goals share at 5-on-5. Offense has dipped to be sure but he’s still a two-way stud.
Couturier missed Thursday’s game against the Senators, and should be back in the lineup by Monday, per Kurz’s reporting. If he misses tomorrow’s game, Morgan Frost should draw into the lineup by default, as he did against the Sens–which was not the plan, as John Tortorella had intended to keep the lineup the same (that is, Frost healthy scratched) going into Ottawa. Frost has had a rough stretch of late, and must take advantage of this opportunity. Otherwise, he may find himself in the press box again come the return of Couturier.
