The Flyers rank 26th on The Athletic's goalie rankings ahead of the Blue Jackets, Sharks, Penguins, Kraken, Kings, and Blackhawks.

Original Article Link (by Sean McIndoe, Scott Wheeler and Jesse Granger)

Relevant Excerpts

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"The basic question here: How good should each team feel about their goaltending situation, both for right now and peering into the future?

Here’s how this will work. We’ve given each of the 32 teams a ranking in three categories:

Current goaltending: How good is their goaltending at the NHL level right now? How good does it project to be in the near term, which we define as the next three years? This section includes the two goalies who are expected to start the 2024-25 season, as well as anyone else in the system who can be projected to play games. The Athletic’s goaltending expert, Jesse Granger, handled this section.

Future prospects: This section ranks each team’s goaltenders in the system who’ve yet to establish themselves as full-time NHLers, with a focus on ceiling and upside. Prospect expert Scott Wheeler weighs in here.

Note that in theory, there can be some overlap between the first two sections. Yaroslav Askarov is a prospect but will almost certainly spend meaningful time in the NHL over the next three years. Jake Oettinger is the Stars’ starter now, and at just 25 years old he’s also their future. That’s OK, because Jesse and Scott are looking at those players from two different perspectives: How good they are now (Jesse), how good they can be and for how long at their eventual peak (Scott).

Cap and contracts: Who makes what, and for how many years? Ideally, a team will have the security of having its good goaltenders locked in at a reasonable price and term. In a hard-cap league, a good player making too much for too long may be a negative asset, so contracts matter. There’s going to be some guesswork here, as some key players need new deals. For example, Shesterkin hasn’t signed an extension with the Rangers yet, but that doesn’t mean we just assume that he will walk as an unrestricted free agent in 2025. The key is that this section is about getting value from good players for as long as possible, not simply having the lowest cap hit you can. Sean McIndoe handles this section, with cap info from PuckPedia.

For each category, teams were ranked from 1 to 32. Those scores were then weighted, with “current goaltending” getting a 1.0 weight, while “future prospects” was given 0.75 to recognize the difficulty in peering too far into the future. “Cap and contracts” was weighted at 0.5; it’s important, but history shows us that there are ways to wiggle out of bad deals, although it may be painful."

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26. Philadelphia Flyers

Current: 28

Granger: Samuel Ersson started hot in his rookie season before fading down the stretch (along with the overall play in front of him). He’s only 24, but he’ll now be competing with newly-signed Ivan Fedotov, who comes over from the KHL with an impressive resume. His save percentage has hovered around .920 in his last three seasons in Russia, and while he didn’t play well in his first small taste of NHL action last year he should get a chance to prove he’s the guy in 2024-25.

Future: 11

Wheeler: Ersson, 24, is starting to cut his teeth in the NHL, and the Flyers have three goalie prospects of some consequence behind him. They’ve signed Belarusian Alexei Kolosov after parts of four strong seasons in the KHL and 2023 second-rounder Carson Bjarnason after two decent seasons in the WHL (he’ll be back with Brandon this year and while I’m lower on him than most, I do see the appeal). And 2023 third-rounder Yegor Zavragin will get signed if he continues to play for SKA next season like he did for Mamonty Yugry the last three seasons.

Cap: 19

McIndoe: The Fedotov deal is a bit of a weird one for an unproven player, although the Flyers did what they had to do under the circumstances. At $3.275 million, he could be a bust or a bargain or somewhere in between, but the deal lasts only two years, and we should know much more about the player by then. Ersson is cheap. Unfortunately, Cal Petersen is not; his $5 million AAV may be the worst for any goalie in the league right now, although it has only one year left and gets a little cheaper assuming it’s in the AHL.

Bottom line: This year is about shedding Peterson’s deal and seeing what they have in Ersson and Fedotov, which isn’t a bad plan at all.

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