What’s a Philadelphia Flyers regular season without a little goaltending controversy?
After a week or so of speculation, the Flyers have officially given the call to the minors for goaltending prospect, Alexei Kolosov, after a shaky start to the 2024-25 season for Ivan Fedotov. Mixed in with Fedotov’s shakiness was an apparent deadline between team and player, where the Flyers had until the end of October to either call up Kolosov or presumably send him back to Minsk on loan for the remainder of the year.
Alongside Kolosov, Emil Andrae earned another recall with Cam York sidelined for the next 2 weeks at the minimum with an upper-body injury sustained in Wednesday’s loss to Washington.
Rumours started to ramp up late in the week when Anthony Di Marco and Frank Seravalli posited the idea that the Flyers would be giving Kolosov the call, which coincidentally coincided with another blunder of a game from Fedotov. The hulking Russian netminder has struggled in his limited action between 2023-24 and 2024-25, but bringing up the Belarusian netminder might have more to do about keeping him in North America and not sending him back to the KHL.
After Kolosov arrived in North America last year, he played sparingly for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms who were in the middle of a playoff race. Cal Petersen was the da facto number one for the Phantoms and the limited playing time for Kolosov seemed to have rubbed him the wrong way as he expected more run upon his arrival. Then things started to spiral over the summer with reports about his displeasure with the organization and how they handled him specifically, he was home-sick, and intended to skip training camp if he wasn’t assured a spot with the big club.
After months of speculation, Kolosov skipped the early portion of training camp but made his way mid-way through and appeared in a few games before ultimately being sent down to the Phantoms.
The former third round pick from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft showed his true potential over the last few seasons with Dinamo Minsk.
Kolosov played parts of 4 seasons for hometown team starting all the way back in 2020-21, where he earned himself 9 starts and compiled a 3-5-1 record despite a .911 SV% and a 2.69 GAA. During his draft+1 season, he played in 22 games and put up an 11-9-1 record with a .906 SV% and a 2.90 GAA with 1 shutout. 2022-23 was perhaps his best season in terms of his peripherals as he posted a .912 SV% and a 2.55 GAA despite a 13-21-5 record.
He finished off his 4-year stint with a 22-21-3 season last year with a .907 SV% and 2.39 GAA. While Minsk were not a great offensive club, Kolosov did his job in getting his club to the postseason at the very least in 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24.
To date with the Phantoms, he has appeared in 6 contests split between 2023-24 and 2024-25 with a 2-3-1 record, a .880 SV%, and a GAA just north of 3.00. While his numbers aren’t anything to parade about at the moment, the timing of this move is more of a sign that the Flyers prefer to see what they have in him now rather than having him go back to the KHL.
Fedotov on the other hand remains with the club for the time being but a stint with the Phantoms could do wonders for his development and acclimation to the North American game. He would have to clear waivers first but with another year remaining on his contract at 3.25 million dollar AAV, not many teams have the cap to take that on.
Currently the Flyers’ 23-man roster has 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 3 goaltenders, leaving very little margin for error in terms of lineup replacements and injuries. However, they still don’t know what they have in Kolosov to make a rash decision in sending Fedotov to the minors through waivers.
There’s a good chance Kolosov starts for the Flyers against the Montréal Canadiens but if they run it back with Samuel Ersson or give Fedotov one more chance, Kolosov’s time will come soon enough.
With York officially placed on IR, the Flyers lose their presumed number one defenseman who played in all situations and averaged well over 22 and a half minutes to date. Andrae will certainly have his number called upon during this stint, unlike his previous one when he sat in the press box to start the season. However, it will probably be a wait-and-see approach from the coaching staff in regard to when he finally makes his season debut.
The former 2nd round pick from the 2020 NHL Entry Draft has just 4 games of NHL experience but has done a fantastic job in short order for the Phantoms. Andrae recorded 32 points in 61 games during his first full season last year, accrued 6 points in 10 games upon his arrival in 2022-23, and notched an assist in his first game of the 2024-25 season.
Andrae’s arrival should put a little more pressure on the likes of Egor Zamula and Erik Johnson, who patrolled the third pairing in Saturday’s victory over the Minnesota Wild.
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