PHILADELPHIA — Samuel Ersson was never supposed to be on the fast track. Just two years ago the former fifth-round pick was with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, attempting to show team brass he deserved a shot to play regularly in the AHL, let alone the NHL.
Now, less than two weeks after his 25th birthday, Ersson is not only the Flyers’ No.1 starter, he’s really the only one at the game’s most important position that the organization can fully trust at the moment. The Flyers continue to carry three goalies on their roster, but Ivan Fedotov has not shown any indication he belongs in the NHL, and if you gave the team’s decision-makers any truth serum they’d all tell you current No. 2 Aleksei Kolosov should still be in the AHL himself.
“He’s not supposed to be in this position right now in his career,” coach John Tortorella said of Ersson on Thursday, after the Flyers’ 2-1 win over the Blues at Wells Fargo Center in which the goalie made 20 saves. “We were supposed to develop him. So a lot of things are coming at him pretty quickly, and I think he’s handled them pretty well.”
Ersson, who also made 25 saves in shutting out the Bruins 2-0 in Boston on Tuesday, has started seven of the Flyers’ 11 games this season. He upped his record to 4-2-1 on Thursday, with a .897 save percentage and 2.72 goals-against average. The Flyers are 0-4-0 when it’s been either Fedotov or Kolosov starting.
That means Ersson is really their only reliable option right now. And fortunately for the Flyers, they could conceivably keep riding him over the next few weeks. There are no back-to-back situations until the last two days of November, and three two-day breaks sprinkled in before that, too. Tortorella confirmed Kolosov will get a game at some point — perhaps a Nov. 11 match at home with the lowly San Jose Sharks makes sense — but there’s little doubt Ersson is going to play the bulk of the games for the next little while, particularly as the Flyers attempt to dig themselves out of an early-season hole.
“He’s in shape,” Tortorella said. “We have to find out about (Kolosov) too … but I’m not afraid to ride (Ersson). It just depends on how much action he’s getting in the games. A lot of things come into play as we go from game to game.”
The danger in that is a repeat of what happened down the stretch last season, when Ersson’s heavy workload following the departure of Carter Hart last January caught up with him and he faltered. The Flyers tried a whole host of backups then, too, but none of them were any good. Tortorella repeated on Thursday something he’s said many times: he had no choice to keep putting Ersson in net, and he would do it again.
Again may have arrived.
“Sam’s playing well,” Tortorella said. “He’s played well right from the get-go. Last year when he struggled, it was too much. As I told you guys last year, I would have done the same thing because we really had no one else playing at that time, and Sam had to eat it. We’re going to try to do it the right way with him here in a long season. I think from camp on, he’s played really well.”
Ersson mentioned he’s been working hand-in-hand with the Flyers’ training staff on his recovery process from game to game. But there’s a mental element, too, that he’s better prepared to handle after what he went through late last season.
“(The training staff) are really putting in time with me, so I think I know I have to take time to recover. That’s definitely something I learned from last year, and the guys around the team are helping me in a great way,” Ersson said.
He continued: “I think for me it’s … knowing I’ve got to take my mind off things when I’m away from the rink, too, to rest mentally. It’s a long season. I know it’s going to have its ups and downs and be tough sometimes. Got to find a way to grind through it.”
Ersson made a number of impressive stops on Thursday. With the Flyers holding an early 1-0 lead, the scuffling Blues came out strong in the second period, but Ersson denied Nathan Walker and Alexey Toropchenko from in tight about five minutes in.
In the third, still 1-0, Ersson anticipated a feed to Jake Neighbours in front of the net for a redirection and calmly turned it aside. His best stop came with 20 seconds to go with the Flyers preserving their 2-1 edge when Brayden Schenn got free in front but Ersson was there to close his pads on the puck, with a little help from Travis Sanheim behind him, freezing play.
He’s also had some help lately from the Flyers’ defensive-zone structure, which was a mess for the first few weeks of the season but has been drastically better of late. In their two wins this week, the first time the Flyers have won consecutive games this season, neither the Bruins nor the Blues had many prime scoring chances in games that were low-event on both sides.
“These past couple of games we’ve been clogging the middle of the ice and that’s kind of what’s been missing in our game, and I thought we did a good job tonight,” Nick Seeler said. “And, obviously, it’s nice when Ers is standing on his head for us.”
The Flyers blocked 24 shots on Thursday after their 28-block performance against the Bruins. But there’s more to it than just getting in front of the puck — the Flyers’ defenders know when they need to sell out and dive in front of shots, but also when to let Ersson handle them.
“They’re blocking the right shots, too,” Ersson said. “They’re not trying to get in front of everything. They’re knowing what shots they can leave to me, and I think that’s huge. That builds chemistry between me and the guys in front of me.”
At some point, the Flyers are going to have to do more on the scoreboard. They still have a number of forwards struggling to get going, although Joel Farabee and Bobby Brink teaming up for the game-winning goal with 3:01 left in regulation was a welcome sign. More players up front will have to start making more plays, and soon, if the Flyers are going to get into the playoff race.
As long as they continue to play a patient, defensively responsible game, Tortorella believes scoring will come around.
“What I appreciate from the players is that they’re not overextending themselves offensively because we’re struggling,” Tortorella said. “Some of these offensive guys will get out of it. We’ll be a better team for it if we can just stay with the structure.”
And if they keep getting saves from the only guy on the roster they can reliably count on to do that.
“You know (Ersson is) going to show up for every game and is going to make some huge saves for us and keep us in every game,” Seeler said. “That’s a goalie you want to play in front of.”
(Top photo: Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)
