After Philadelphia’s exciting and fun 7-5 win over Minnesota Saturday afternoon, most of the news concerned Sean Couturier’s hat trick and five-point game. But there was also reports that the Flyers were about to add two players from the Lehigh Valley Phantoms either on Saturday evening or sometime Sunday. The two players in question? Defenseman Emil Andrae and goaltender Aleksei Kolosov.
The easy one to explain is Andrae. The blueliner, who was previously called up to the Flyers but saw no action, would be a logical replacement for defenseman Cam York who missed his first game against Minnesota and is expected to be out for at least two weeks. Erik Johnson wasn’t great on Saturday and would probably be worse on the backend of two games in about 36 hours. Giving Andrae a chance to replace Johnson and see some time with the big club would be a solid explanation if he was to play Sunday evening in Montreal.
The other possible call up might be a bit more of a head-scratcher. The speculation grew following a tweet by NHL analyst Kevin Weekes who said the following:
The tweet asked if it was time for the Flyers to give Kolosov a chance to play after less than stellar efforts from Ivan Fedotov. In three games this year Fedotov has a .821 save percentage and a goals-against average of 5.35. If there was any silver lining to Fedotov’s game it was in the third period of the Washington tilt Wednesday night when he made some fantastic stops to keep the Flyers in it before the Flyers made a game of it. Yes, he hasn’t been stopping a lot of pucks but with not even 280 minutes played in his entire NHL career, it might be a bit of a knee jerk reaction. It wouldn’t affect the roster number as with Jett Luchanko sent to Guelph it opened up another spot which it appears Kolosov will fill for the time being.
What is also known is that Cal Petersen started Saturday night’s game for the Phantoms, which would only add more smoke to the speculation. Kolosov has four games played with the Phantoms in the American Hockey League and has a .875 save percentage and 3.29 goals-against average. This was after a newsworthy summer which had many wondering if Kolosov would head to North America or simply stay home. Last season’s stint with the Phantoms didn’t go as smoothly as Kolosov or the Flyers expected.
So, if Kolosov is called up the Flyers all of a sudden have three goaltenders on the roster and perhaps a bit of a rotational headache of sorts. Nobody expects Ersson to end up in Lehigh Valley. So it’s safe to assume if he’s healthy he’s one part of the goaltending tandem. If Kolosov gets some games with the Flyers it will hopefully create some competition between he and Fedotov, give the Flyers some quality starts with backups and maybe earn a few more wins or at worst loser points.
However this could go a bit pear-shaped just as quickly. If neither Kolosov nor Fedotov can be good then the Flyers are left with a lot more questions than answers in goal. And Flyers general manager Danny Briere on the receiving end of phone calls from the agents of both Kolosov and Fedotov.
