Sam Ersson Injured Again; Maligned Flyers Goalie Must Prove Himself

Starting Philadelphia Flyers goalie Sam Ersson suffered an undisclosed injury at practice on Wednesday; he left the ice unusually early on his own and was not available in the locker room afterwards. The Flyers have since announced that Ersson is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, opening the door for the much-maligned Ivan Fedotov to prove himself.

Head coach John Tortorella revealed at morning skate on Thursday that Fedotov, not Aleksei Kolosov, would start for the Flyers against the Ottawa Senators. The 27-year-old is making just his second appearance since Oct. 23, with his last game being a 22-save effort for his first NHL win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Nov. 7.

Fedotov looked much improved in that game, even accounting for a faulty read that allowed Nikita Kucherov to score a vital wraparound goal.

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“He just looked different to me,” Tortorella said on Thursday regarding Fedotov’s last start. “I’m not going to sit here and talk about technique. I don’t know enough about the position. He just looked more confident, and I really thought the compete level was higher than what I’ve seen in the other games.

“He’s got to do it again. I don’t really have a sample size.”

Ersson re-aggravating his previous injury is obviously a huge loss, but it says a lot about Fedotov that he has wrested the backup goalie position back from Kolosov.

Kolosov started games for the Flyers on Oct. 27 and Nov. 5 and had entered the game in relief of Ersson the first time he got injured on Nov. 2.

As Tortorella mentioned above, he is not really in tune with the goalie position, so the decision of going with Fedotov is both a gut call from Tortorella and based on feedback from his goalie coach, Kim Dillabaugh.

If Fedotov can “do it again”, it will go a long way towards salvaging his Flyers career. The former KHL Goaltender of the Year is a career 1-4-1 in the NHL with a 4.37 GAA and .838 save percentage, but another strong performance could foreshadow more good things to come.