November 02, 2024
Kyle Ross/Imagn Images
Flyers goaltender Aleksei Kolosov needed to sub in for an injured Sam Ersson against the Bruins on Saturday.
The Flyers lost Saturday's game against the Bruins, 3-0, but they might have a bigger problem on their hands now.
Sam Ersson left midway through the first period after taking a shot off the toe and didn't return. Aleksei Kolosov took over as the backup goaltender and made 20 of 22 saves in relief, all while an admittedly more defensive-minded Flyers team continued to sputter offensively.
They're back to square one with Saturday's loss after checking and grinding their way to two straight wins this week for the first time all season, but now they're doing so possibly without the No. 1 goaltender who's given them at least a chance in every one of his starts for a bit.
Head coach John Tortorella has stressed that the Flyers do need to figure out their backup goaltending situation, between Kolosov and Ivan Fedotov, as they move into November, but this is probably far from how the team imagined to be going about it.
And now the upcoming stretch could stand to get rough, especially with a road trip to Carolina on deck against a Hurricanes team that just pummeled these same Bruins, 8-2, on Thursday night.
"I'm not gonna get ahead of myself with Sam because I really don't know," Tortorella said postgame.
"I thought we played hard in front of him, Koly," Tortorella added later about Kolosov. "I don't think there's going to be a problem there at all. He's got some personality to his game. He fights."
Ersson kicked his right leg out to make a pad save on Boston defenseman Nikita Zadorov's shot when the puck ricocheted off his toe and knocked the blade out of his skate.
Ersson stayed down on the stoppage to have a trainer pop the blade back in, but during the TV timeout that followed, he skated over to the Flyers bench to talk to head athletic trainer Tommy Alva and pointed down at his right foot. Ersson went down the tunnel soon after, all while Kolosov stepped onto the ice to warm up.
Ersson did not return, and details were limited during the game and its immediate aftermath, though it was said over the NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast that Ersson did have an injury and that Fedotov was dressing as the emergency backup, per Kevin Durso of 97.3 ESPN.
Postgame, the Flyers gave Ersson the lower-body injury designation.
Uh oh. Sam Ersson heads down the tunnel and Alexei Kolosov is in net.
— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) November 2, 2024
He had a skate blade issue earlier, but it's unclear why he's gone. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/MTcCW6vUlY
Kolosov got tested quickly when a Pavel Zacha shot from the slot found its way to the front of the net and got lost in a scramble after the Bruins' Justin Brazeau tried to jam home the rebound. Kolosov kept eyes on it the whole way to keep the Flyers out of trouble and the game scoreless for the time being.
But after a Travis Sanheim scoring chance missed the mark on a rush sparked by a Rasmus Ristolainen stretch pass to the far blue line and a patient Matvei Michkov waiting to make the feed over to the Flyers defenseman crashing in, Boston turned it the other way and scored when Matthew Poitras picked up another rebound and managed to slip it through Kolosov's pads to make it a 1-0 game with under seven minutes left in the period.
GOAL NO. 1 FOR MATTY P 🤩 pic.twitter.com/Vt7mIMZKTf
— NESN (@NESN) November 2, 2024
Kolosov couldn't track it, and the Flyers had no answers down 2-0.
Brad's pass sets up a Braz blast 🚀 😤 pic.twitter.com/yFUaRFCQgH
— NESN (@NESN) November 2, 2024
The Flyers pulled Kolosov for an extra attacker and a last gasp with just under four minutes left in regulation, and Marchand picked up a bounce and launched it across the ice and into the empty net to put the contest out of reach.
Of course, it also didn't help that the Flyers' power play continued to struggle as well, going 0-for-3 on Saturday and 1 for the last 13 going back to last weekend against Minnesota.
Flyers players said they believe they have the scorers in the room for the goals to come eventually, so long as they stick to their process, but they've won two of three this week on just four goals alone with the priority kept heavily on making sure that the puck stays out of their own net.
Bobby Brink scored the winner on Thursday night against the Blues, but he's been struggling to get on the scoresheet otherwise. The same goes for Owen Tippett, who hasn't found the back of the net since his first goal of the season back on Oct. 23 at Washington, and Morgan Frost, who just hasn't found it at all.
Travis Konecny and Michkov are the team's leading scorers with five and four goals, respectively, but if the production isn't coming from them, it's not really coming (consistently, that is) from anywhere else – and that hasn't been anywhere near enough for a team now standing at 4-7-1.
"I think we just got to get our feet under us," Frost said. "Every team is gonna have stretches they go through that are tough throughout the season. I think it's just kind of about stopping the bleeding.
"We got pretty much the same team [as last year], so I think we all know what's in this room and we can do it. I think it's just a matter of going out and doing it for a full 60 minutes."
The next chance to try and put that effort together will be Tuesday night in Carolina.
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