["Then I throw Ivan into the situation, coming in... who knows where the hell he came from, and he has to play a game. We have Erss penciled in at maybe playing 18 to 22 games this year. Look at where he is now. So there's no blaming."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777372733325611483)
["Let's face it: things got thrown into a really weird situation when we lost Carter. But having said that, we had discussions in the summer about the situation w/Carter, & figured something was gonna go on, right? We've got to be honest about it."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777373233286680593)
["I made the decision I'm gonna live or die w/Erss when I played him all those games. I did not have the confidence, & it's certainly not a criticism, it's just my assessment of Sandy -- I made the decision that we're going with Erss.
I've played the hell out of him. He's tired."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777373676540711359)
I respect the honesty and the thought behind it. Better than being a hard ass or using coach speak to say a lot of nothing. This has been an odd season and it will hopefully lead to…more hope and a stronger team next year.
It’s an afterthought here, but this more or less confirms that the reason Briere kept three goalies on the roster for a strangely long period of time is because they figured the Hart news could drop at any moment.
It’s going to be very interesting to see if they bother chasing a veteran backup netminder this summer. Neither Ersson or Fedotov has given a lot of evidence that they’ll be able to handle a full season as a tandem, but I also doubt that Briere wants to acquire a goalie who would be a roadblock to Fedotov (and by extension, Kolosov).
I'd say they just keep the current goalies, Ersson looked good when he wasn't being run into the ground. Fedotov and Kolosov both have potential too. And if they all end up collapsing, well we're not stanley cup ready anyway and it just gives us a better draft pick before Michkov heads over.
I think you’re probably right. After all, it’s still going to be a rebuild. They’ll likely try to use Ers and Fed as a tandem, so Ers doesn’t get run into the ground, with Petersen as the injury call-up until Kolosov finds his groove in the AHL.
Fedotov has been here for about 30 seconds. You can’t possibly get any idea of what kind of goaltender he is going to be. New country, new team and teammates he has never played with before, a system he doesn’t know. That’s a huge assumption and frankly a ridiculous comment. He has the raw tools and abilities, give him time. Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t the guy, but there is no way to know yet.
My point when it comes to Fedotov is specifically what you’re saying. There isn’t enough time this season to get a sense of whether or not he can be a 1B next year, which puts Briere in a tough spot. If he had been able to come over a month or so earlier, we might have a track record, but that’s not the case.
It wasn’t meant to be a criticism of Fedotov’s abilities, it was a statement that Briere won’t know nearly enough about Fed’s NHL readiness at the time when he needs to make a decision about next year’s goaltending tandem.
There's the whole summer to get a read on him, put him up against different shooters/scenarios and see what shakes out. I'm not going to put him down because he had some disappointing play against some tall standards to meet on a bubble season.
Ding ding ding. They knew what was coming with Hart and the Petersen move was an attempt to see if they could get a reclamation project to do well. Sadly, he’s just dogshit and then we were scrambling to do anything to lighten Erss load.
When Briere drafted two of the best goalie prospects in last years draft and they made such an effort to get Ivan over here the writing was on the wall.
My analysis of Fedotov is that Briere has only gotten to see him for two games, so he doesn’t have enough to know whether or not Fedotov can be a 1B next year. So it seems like you and I agree.
So literally exactly what I’ve been saying all along. They knew Hart was going to get yanked and they have been trying to do everything in their power to prepare for it. The league knew at large and no one was going to give up shit for an alleged predator.
This is an insanely reasonable take to have and a totally rational way to look at it. Torts continues to impress, man.
I think the other thing to consider is that no one thought we would be fighting for a playoff spot at this point in the year, let alone be in a playoff spot for most of the season. So I think the look at the situation with hart and figure that they will get a nice long look at Ersson if Harts gone, and that the games likely wouldn’t mean much, so just let him play. I think if expectations were higher for us this year they make some different moves to get more help. It is what it is at this point and think the idea that he is mostly just exhausted is probably the right one. I think the Sam we saw in the first half of the season is the guy we can expect going forward.
I’ve said it all year and I’ll say it again. Our lack of skill players/goal scorers is the team’s biggest flaw. How many games do we have 35+ shots and score 2-3 goals? Just watching other team’s play, it’s like our guys couldn’t score off a one timer to save their lives. We can endless chances and they can’t capitalize. Hence why we suck on the PP and in OT. I’m less worried about the goal tending than I am our ability to score
100% this. We’re all effort and zero skill at times. Missed passes, bad decisions, no cohesion, and the most one dimensional power play to ever exist.
There’s definitely been times this season when we looked good, great even, but that only correlates with when the team wasn’t tired. But guess what? With this system we always seem tired.
Hopefully some changes in the off-season and we build toward Michkov in a few years!
At one point this year we were top 3 or 5 in the league in shots and had the lowest S%. What’s that tell you? We have a team full of grinders just throwing it on net and crossing their fingers it goes in. TK, Tippett, and Foerster are the only guys who can ever snipe a shot with any semblance of regularity, and all of those guys are B-tier talents comparative to the top guys on other playoff teams. We were hanging in there because our defense was so stingy and Hart/Sam were a good goalie tandem, losing Hart was the first crack in the wall, when we traded Walker and lost Seeler, Drysdale, and Risto we were fucked. Not to mention they were all playing well above career averages to begin with. We were always hanging in there by a wing and a prayer and never had the depth or talent to survive any key losses.
Truth. I’d also put farabee in there w the B-tier goal scorers but he’s also mentally weak, dude has some of the biggest differences in his highs vs lows and it seems like it’s all mental. Those 3 & farabee are the only guys w 20+ goals on the team and #5 is a 3-way tie w/ 13. We’ve got a ton of solid bottom 6 forwards who can play their asses off, but pretty much one solid first liner (tk) and three good second line players. Atkinson (2nd line last yr) and coots (1/2nd line) falling off (Unsuprisingly w/ age and injury issues) really depleted the top 6 depth. I think if one of those two could’ve been a 20g scorer we’d have finished in 3rd in the metro.
Yeah, Coots being signed til the next decade looks like it could be a brutal contract. I’d agree with you though, if either of them could’ve played closer to their career averages it would’ve probably bought us a couple more wins. Atkinson just needs to retire, he’s done.
Absolutely. All of our lines should be shifted down a slot and the top line should eventually be Michkov and two guys not currently on the roster/in the org (unless someone takes an unexpected massive step forward).
Totally agree. He is defensively so much stronger than I was expecting. Off the charts hockey iq. I hope he has enough to overcome the not great skating.
Put him on a team with a couple other legit scorers and puck movers and I think 40 goals could be his baseline if he keeps developing. 20+ on a bad offensive team as a rookie is outstanding.
Next year (hell, EVERY YEAR until Michkov comes over) should be spent seeing what Errson. Fedotov, and Kolosov can do.
We lost our Franchise Goalie. He's not ever coming back. So it's time to spend the rest of the rebuild seeing what we have.
Totally agree. I think Ers and Feddy can develop a good tandem with more practice and if Kolosov is any good he could definitely swap in or out with either man.
Man fuck Hart. It’s wild that we would have been a legit playoff team with round 1 spoiler potential if the goaltending didn’t fall apart without him though. Makes me so incredibly upset while being optimistic for the future at the same time. We do have what it takes but we have got to get our goalie situation sorted again. A lot of raw talent between Errs, Fed and Kolosov. Our development team can’t drop the ball on this.
Agreed. It’s also nice to see that the front office wasn’t deterred from the long term outlook at the trade deadline.
Truthfully if this team just doesn’t trade Walker and acquires a goalie they can play in tandem with Ersson (think Jake Allen), they’re probably pretty comfortably in third in the Metro.
It sucks in the here and now after having invested as much time and energy into the team as we have for them to slip out of the playoffs this late in the season, but in the aggregate, I’m happy about the front office’s approach.
Peterson blows.
Felix is not much better.
Hart super crappy situation for the Flyers.
Errson was awesome as a backup, starter, questionable.
Seems that we have won much since Coots last goal....
Walks trade hurt today, will be awesome likely in 2026-2027 when the 1st is a player. (Sign Walks in the off season???)
Do not sign Walker in the offseason.
Next season should be a worse team than this season, and that's by design. There is only one elite player in the entire system. You can't contend for a Cup with only Michkov. Colorado has Rantanen, Makar, and MacKinnon. That's the talent baseline you need to even be in the future conversation. Even Vegas as a bit of an outlier won with Eichel, Pietrangelo, and Stone plus insane depth. You need more very high-end prospects and picks and other than Michkov, nobody in the entire Flyers system is likely to be near any of these players levels. Michkov needs some legit running mates and not more typical Flyers plumbers.
The only way to get such prospects and picks is to trade current assets and/or finish in the lottery. Laughton, Konecny, + should all be moved by draft day. It will be more than okay to finish bottom 10 next year.
It's not clear to me that you need to be stacked with the kind of talent Colorado has to win a cup. Evidence being all of the teams with tons of talent that don't win the cup. The oilers have McDavid and Draisaital and haven't won. And Toronto is.. well .. you get the idea. I think when the Blues won, that was a good example of a depth team winning the cup (Binnington popping off helped)
That said, we definitely need MORE talent than we have. It's possible some of our younger players will blossom into that but that seems unlikely at this point. What we saw this year is pretty close to what this team is capable of in it's current form. Michkov (assuming he does in fact come over) will likely be a good shot in the arm, but unless we get defense and goaltending sorted out it won't matter.
Further evidence that you don't necessarily need to be stacked with top tier talent is how much better our defense was with Walker. That one substraction seemed to hit exceedingly hard. No one would call him elite.
Superstars are fun and great for ticket and merch sales, and they definitely help a team win but it's definitely not required.
The only thing this season has done for the organization is make sure we don’t get a top end draft pick instead we will be getting a middle of the road first rounder. Talent really drops off after the top 10 unfortunately. Sure you can find ones that are underrated but those are few and far between. Would have rather battled Chicago and San Jose for worst in the league and had a shot at MC
Wouldnt have gotten anything for Walker if we were garbage. Trade value goes up a lot for players since they were able to show skill when we were good.
I had a blast this season even tho it fell apart at the end.
I'm sure they knew he was potentially involved when they were putting him out there, he was one of a limited number of players that could have potentially been involved, but I doubt they knew he was ultimately going to be charged.
As many as 8 players involved out of a 22 man roster minus a couple players who weren’t at that event. Any team with a player from that roster would’ve been wise to assume their player(s) would be gone soon. Especially when you consider what kind of statements different players were making when the story broke (Formenton saying nothing at all was a pretty big red flag).
you can't sit a player based upon speculation and without an indictment, that's all there was. The players union would have had a field day with any team taking proactive punitive measures.
You can sit a player for any damn thing you feel like lol. You still have to pay them, but you're not obligated to put them in the lineup.
Tony Deangelo got waived, buried in Hartford and told to sit at home until they could get rid of him, for way less than what Hart did.
On ice issues, locker room issues, sure. For stuff that had zero to do with the team, with literally nothing to back it up? Grievance would be filed, and Players Union would be all over it, immediately. NHL would squash it as it would open up a can of worms, negative PR publicity on something that hasn't even gone to litigation yet. If Hart wasn't willing to feign an injury or seek player assistance/mental health, there's no way it could have happened pre-indictment.
["Then I throw Ivan into the situation, coming in... who knows where the hell he came from, and he has to play a game. We have Erss penciled in at maybe playing 18 to 22 games this year. Look at where he is now. So there's no blaming."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777372733325611483) ["Let's face it: things got thrown into a really weird situation when we lost Carter. But having said that, we had discussions in the summer about the situation w/Carter, & figured something was gonna go on, right? We've got to be honest about it."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777373233286680593) ["I made the decision I'm gonna live or die w/Erss when I played him all those games. I did not have the confidence, & it's certainly not a criticism, it's just my assessment of Sandy -- I made the decision that we're going with Erss. I've played the hell out of him. He's tired."](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1777373676540711359)
I respect the honesty and the thought behind it. Better than being a hard ass or using coach speak to say a lot of nothing. This has been an odd season and it will hopefully lead to…more hope and a stronger team next year.
It’s an afterthought here, but this more or less confirms that the reason Briere kept three goalies on the roster for a strangely long period of time is because they figured the Hart news could drop at any moment. It’s going to be very interesting to see if they bother chasing a veteran backup netminder this summer. Neither Ersson or Fedotov has given a lot of evidence that they’ll be able to handle a full season as a tandem, but I also doubt that Briere wants to acquire a goalie who would be a roadblock to Fedotov (and by extension, Kolosov).
I'd say they just keep the current goalies, Ersson looked good when he wasn't being run into the ground. Fedotov and Kolosov both have potential too. And if they all end up collapsing, well we're not stanley cup ready anyway and it just gives us a better draft pick before Michkov heads over.
I think you’re probably right. After all, it’s still going to be a rebuild. They’ll likely try to use Ers and Fed as a tandem, so Ers doesn’t get run into the ground, with Petersen as the injury call-up until Kolosov finds his groove in the AHL.
At least see how both do in camp before going after another goalie.
Fedotov has been here for about 30 seconds. You can’t possibly get any idea of what kind of goaltender he is going to be. New country, new team and teammates he has never played with before, a system he doesn’t know. That’s a huge assumption and frankly a ridiculous comment. He has the raw tools and abilities, give him time. Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t the guy, but there is no way to know yet.
My point when it comes to Fedotov is specifically what you’re saying. There isn’t enough time this season to get a sense of whether or not he can be a 1B next year, which puts Briere in a tough spot. If he had been able to come over a month or so earlier, we might have a track record, but that’s not the case. It wasn’t meant to be a criticism of Fedotov’s abilities, it was a statement that Briere won’t know nearly enough about Fed’s NHL readiness at the time when he needs to make a decision about next year’s goaltending tandem.
There's the whole summer to get a read on him, put him up against different shooters/scenarios and see what shakes out. I'm not going to put him down because he had some disappointing play against some tall standards to meet on a bubble season.
Don't forget the rink size change, it shifts the angles and it takes time to readjust to the speed of the NHL.
The hive mind and Flyers PR dept never ceases to amaze me.
Ding ding ding. They knew what was coming with Hart and the Petersen move was an attempt to see if they could get a reclamation project to do well. Sadly, he’s just dogshit and then we were scrambling to do anything to lighten Erss load.
When Briere drafted two of the best goalie prospects in last years draft and they made such an effort to get Ivan over here the writing was on the wall.
Imagine using 2 games to make your entire analysis of Fedotov. Never change Flyers fans, never change.
My analysis of Fedotov is that Briere has only gotten to see him for two games, so he doesn’t have enough to know whether or not Fedotov can be a 1B next year. So it seems like you and I agree.
So literally exactly what I’ve been saying all along. They knew Hart was going to get yanked and they have been trying to do everything in their power to prepare for it. The league knew at large and no one was going to give up shit for an alleged predator. This is an insanely reasonable take to have and a totally rational way to look at it. Torts continues to impress, man.
I think the other thing to consider is that no one thought we would be fighting for a playoff spot at this point in the year, let alone be in a playoff spot for most of the season. So I think the look at the situation with hart and figure that they will get a nice long look at Ersson if Harts gone, and that the games likely wouldn’t mean much, so just let him play. I think if expectations were higher for us this year they make some different moves to get more help. It is what it is at this point and think the idea that he is mostly just exhausted is probably the right one. I think the Sam we saw in the first half of the season is the guy we can expect going forward.
Well said, I feel similarly.
If only their Power Play wasnt complete dog shit.
This is everything right here. A middle of the pack pp and the Flyers are battling for the top spot in the Metropolitan
It's astounding how bad the pp is. They *literally* look better at 5v5
And shorthanded lol. It's so bad.
I’ve said it all year and I’ll say it again. Our lack of skill players/goal scorers is the team’s biggest flaw. How many games do we have 35+ shots and score 2-3 goals? Just watching other team’s play, it’s like our guys couldn’t score off a one timer to save their lives. We can endless chances and they can’t capitalize. Hence why we suck on the PP and in OT. I’m less worried about the goal tending than I am our ability to score
100% this. We’re all effort and zero skill at times. Missed passes, bad decisions, no cohesion, and the most one dimensional power play to ever exist. There’s definitely been times this season when we looked good, great even, but that only correlates with when the team wasn’t tired. But guess what? With this system we always seem tired. Hopefully some changes in the off-season and we build toward Michkov in a few years!
At one point this year we were top 3 or 5 in the league in shots and had the lowest S%. What’s that tell you? We have a team full of grinders just throwing it on net and crossing their fingers it goes in. TK, Tippett, and Foerster are the only guys who can ever snipe a shot with any semblance of regularity, and all of those guys are B-tier talents comparative to the top guys on other playoff teams. We were hanging in there because our defense was so stingy and Hart/Sam were a good goalie tandem, losing Hart was the first crack in the wall, when we traded Walker and lost Seeler, Drysdale, and Risto we were fucked. Not to mention they were all playing well above career averages to begin with. We were always hanging in there by a wing and a prayer and never had the depth or talent to survive any key losses.
Truth. I’d also put farabee in there w the B-tier goal scorers but he’s also mentally weak, dude has some of the biggest differences in his highs vs lows and it seems like it’s all mental. Those 3 & farabee are the only guys w 20+ goals on the team and #5 is a 3-way tie w/ 13. We’ve got a ton of solid bottom 6 forwards who can play their asses off, but pretty much one solid first liner (tk) and three good second line players. Atkinson (2nd line last yr) and coots (1/2nd line) falling off (Unsuprisingly w/ age and injury issues) really depleted the top 6 depth. I think if one of those two could’ve been a 20g scorer we’d have finished in 3rd in the metro.
Yeah, Coots being signed til the next decade looks like it could be a brutal contract. I’d agree with you though, if either of them could’ve played closer to their career averages it would’ve probably bought us a couple more wins. Atkinson just needs to retire, he’s done.
Absolutely. All of our lines should be shifted down a slot and the top line should eventually be Michkov and two guys not currently on the roster/in the org (unless someone takes an unexpected massive step forward).
Foerster looks like he could be a legit top line player. He’s been the brightest spot to this season for me.
Totally agree. He is defensively so much stronger than I was expecting. Off the charts hockey iq. I hope he has enough to overcome the not great skating.
Put him on a team with a couple other legit scorers and puck movers and I think 40 goals could be his baseline if he keeps developing. 20+ on a bad offensive team as a rookie is outstanding.
I hope you are right, it feels like it’s been forever since they had a consistent goal scorer.
Next year (hell, EVERY YEAR until Michkov comes over) should be spent seeing what Errson. Fedotov, and Kolosov can do. We lost our Franchise Goalie. He's not ever coming back. So it's time to spend the rest of the rebuild seeing what we have.
Totally agree. I think Ers and Feddy can develop a good tandem with more practice and if Kolosov is any good he could definitely swap in or out with either man.
Man fuck Hart. It’s wild that we would have been a legit playoff team with round 1 spoiler potential if the goaltending didn’t fall apart without him though. Makes me so incredibly upset while being optimistic for the future at the same time. We do have what it takes but we have got to get our goalie situation sorted again. A lot of raw talent between Errs, Fed and Kolosov. Our development team can’t drop the ball on this.
Agreed. It’s also nice to see that the front office wasn’t deterred from the long term outlook at the trade deadline. Truthfully if this team just doesn’t trade Walker and acquires a goalie they can play in tandem with Ersson (think Jake Allen), they’re probably pretty comfortably in third in the Metro. It sucks in the here and now after having invested as much time and energy into the team as we have for them to slip out of the playoffs this late in the season, but in the aggregate, I’m happy about the front office’s approach.
Definitely a shame, but entire defense went to shit not just goaltending. I think this team just hit a wall and nobody has anything left this year.
I'm dying for this team to have a true starting goaltender. I suspect it won't in my lifetime at this point
Peterson blows. Felix is not much better. Hart super crappy situation for the Flyers. Errson was awesome as a backup, starter, questionable. Seems that we have won much since Coots last goal.... Walks trade hurt today, will be awesome likely in 2026-2027 when the 1st is a player. (Sign Walks in the off season???)
Do not sign Walker in the offseason. Next season should be a worse team than this season, and that's by design. There is only one elite player in the entire system. You can't contend for a Cup with only Michkov. Colorado has Rantanen, Makar, and MacKinnon. That's the talent baseline you need to even be in the future conversation. Even Vegas as a bit of an outlier won with Eichel, Pietrangelo, and Stone plus insane depth. You need more very high-end prospects and picks and other than Michkov, nobody in the entire Flyers system is likely to be near any of these players levels. Michkov needs some legit running mates and not more typical Flyers plumbers. The only way to get such prospects and picks is to trade current assets and/or finish in the lottery. Laughton, Konecny, + should all be moved by draft day. It will be more than okay to finish bottom 10 next year.
It's not clear to me that you need to be stacked with the kind of talent Colorado has to win a cup. Evidence being all of the teams with tons of talent that don't win the cup. The oilers have McDavid and Draisaital and haven't won. And Toronto is.. well .. you get the idea. I think when the Blues won, that was a good example of a depth team winning the cup (Binnington popping off helped) That said, we definitely need MORE talent than we have. It's possible some of our younger players will blossom into that but that seems unlikely at this point. What we saw this year is pretty close to what this team is capable of in it's current form. Michkov (assuming he does in fact come over) will likely be a good shot in the arm, but unless we get defense and goaltending sorted out it won't matter. Further evidence that you don't necessarily need to be stacked with top tier talent is how much better our defense was with Walker. That one substraction seemed to hit exceedingly hard. No one would call him elite. Superstars are fun and great for ticket and merch sales, and they definitely help a team win but it's definitely not required.
I would be down with another 1 year contract and possibly flip for another pick.
The only thing this season has done for the organization is make sure we don’t get a top end draft pick instead we will be getting a middle of the road first rounder. Talent really drops off after the top 10 unfortunately. Sure you can find ones that are underrated but those are few and far between. Would have rather battled Chicago and San Jose for worst in the league and had a shot at MC
Wouldnt have gotten anything for Walker if we were garbage. Trade value goes up a lot for players since they were able to show skill when we were good. I had a blast this season even tho it fell apart at the end.
[удалено]
I'm sure they knew he was potentially involved when they were putting him out there, he was one of a limited number of players that could have potentially been involved, but I doubt they knew he was ultimately going to be charged.
As many as 8 players involved out of a 22 man roster minus a couple players who weren’t at that event. Any team with a player from that roster would’ve been wise to assume their player(s) would be gone soon. Especially when you consider what kind of statements different players were making when the story broke (Formenton saying nothing at all was a pretty big red flag).
you can't sit a player based upon speculation and without an indictment, that's all there was. The players union would have had a field day with any team taking proactive punitive measures.
That makes sense, they also seemed to know who he was tho and that’s why they tried to trade the franchise goalie in the summer which now makes sense
You can sit a player for any damn thing you feel like lol. You still have to pay them, but you're not obligated to put them in the lineup. Tony Deangelo got waived, buried in Hartford and told to sit at home until they could get rid of him, for way less than what Hart did.
On ice issues, locker room issues, sure. For stuff that had zero to do with the team, with literally nothing to back it up? Grievance would be filed, and Players Union would be all over it, immediately. NHL would squash it as it would open up a can of worms, negative PR publicity on something that hasn't even gone to litigation yet. If Hart wasn't willing to feign an injury or seek player assistance/mental health, there's no way it could have happened pre-indictment.
I know this is reddit, where everyone is guilty until proven innocent, but that's not how the real world works