The Flyers are maintaining their focus on the future.
For the first time in quite a long time, goaltending is looking like a strength for the Philadelphia Flyers, and the organization is hoping they can keep it that way for the long haul, too.
The 2026 NHL Draft is just under two weeks away now, and the Flyers traded their third-round pick, in addition to Emil Andrae and Sam Ersson, to the Toronto Maple Leafs for goalie Joseph Woll and defenseman Simon Benoit.
As a result, they now have just four picks: first, second, sixth, and seventh-rounders.
The middle rounds have been completely exhausted, but the Flyers have not drafted a goalie since 2023, when they took both Carson Bjarnason and Egor Zavragin.
If the Flyers had it their way, they would land another decent goalie prospect in the 2026 draft.
"We'd like to. You remember a few years ago, we ended up drafting Bjarnason and Zavragin back-to-back, and it's just the way our guys saw the value of those guys. That was the time we didn't think Zavragin would be there, where we was, we could pass up on him," Flyers general manager Danny Briere said at his pre-draft media availability Tuesday.
"We're not going to force it. If it falls in the right slot, then we're going to jump on it. . . We still have [Aleksei Kolosov], Bjarnason, and Zavragin developing nicely. So, again, it has to make sense for us to take them. If there's a better player at a different position in the first or second round, we're probably going to go in a different direction, but we'd like to add a goalie if we had the chance."
Woll, 27 going on 28, and Dan Vladar, 28 going on 29, are in their primes now, while Bjarnason had an up-and-down first year playing professional hockey for the AHL Lehigh Valley Phantoms and ECHL Reading Royals.
Kolosov, who will quietly already be 25 come Jan. 4, has come along nicely as the starter for the Phantoms this past season, but he's on a one-year contract looking to prove himself, eventually, at the NHL level.
As for Zavragin, well, the 20-year-old was just traded to Metallurg Magnitogorsk in hopes that he'll play regular KHL minutes this season after taking a back seat to Artemi Pleshkov and Sergei Ivanov on SKA St. Petersburg.
The 2023 third-rounder has one year remaining on his current contract, and reports are swirling that he'll extend with Metallurg for another year as well.
That all said, the Flyers have no apparent sure things for the long-term yet, which makes adding more young talent at the goalie position a prudent strategy.
"Goalies, you almost have to be lucky to fall into place. Either you step up in the range, sometimes they fall. Once one goes, typically a bunch go right away, so you can't just reach," Flyers assistant general manager Brent Flahr added.
"If your second-round pick's later, you can't just reach to take a goalie just to take the goalie. If they're in that range that makes sense for your organization, you do it, but at the same time, some years it falls into place for goalie. I, personally, would like to try to draft a goalie most years. When we took two the one year, it kind of took pressure off the year after. We didn't see the value of drafting another one at some of those times, but if it happens, it happens."
Before Kolosov (2021), Bjarnason, and Zavragin (2023), the last goalie the Flyers drafted was Roddy Ross, who went 169th overall in the sixth round of the 2019 draft.
Ross, 25, never signed with the Flyers, spending four seasons playing in USports for the University of Saskatchewan before finally turning pro last season, playing 40 ECHL games for the Wichita Thunder.
The Flyers' goalie outlook can rapidly change with an injury to Vladar or Woll, or if Kolosov doesn't remain with the organization beyond the upcoming season.
Now, even the Flyers themselves have admitted it's probably time to add a new face between the pipes through the draft.