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 hardly 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.
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.
He had a skate blade issue earlier, but it's unclear why he's gone. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/MTcCW6vUlY— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) November 2, 2024
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
The Bruins struck again past the halfway mark in the second, when Justin Brazeau unleashed a blast from the left circle on a setup carried down behind the Philadelphia net by Boston captain Brad Marchand.
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
Boston maintained a 21-12 shot advantage through two periods, and the chances the Flyers could muster were either pushed to tough angles on the outside or quelled on the predictable tendency that they were looking for the pass on the rush. Bruins goaltender Joonas Korpisalo, who made 20 saves in the shutout, and the Boston skaters in front of him picked up on that pattern quickly.
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.
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 it hasn't been anywhere near enough.
The Flyers will be in Carolina on Tuesday night to face the Hurricanes next.
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