Hello Hockey show on Edmonton Sports Talk last week,<\/a> The Fourth Period\u2019s David Pagnotta was in the middle of explaining why there was no goaltender movement at the trade deadline. While other veterans like Jordan Binnington, and most notably Sergei Bobrovsky, were out there in rumors, every netminder stayed on their own teams.<\/p>\n\u201cKeep an eye on Philly, in respect to (Jesper) Wallstedt or Joseph Woll. I think there\u2019s some interest there that they\u2019ll discuss in the summer. It doesn\u2019t mean it will get anywhere, but there\u2019s interest in both,\u201d Pagnotta said.<\/p>\n
Flyers looking to make big goaltending addition via trade<\/p>\n
Those are two high-end netminders and it truly seems like the Flyers are going to be making a splash in the crease before next season.<\/p>\n
The large elephant in the room is that Sam Ersson is on his way out of Philadelphia. Despite the team still holding the 26-year-old\u2019s rights as a restricted free agent this summer, there is no certainty that the Flyers even qualify him and don\u2019t just let Ersson walk. His extremely uninspiring .884 save percentage in the 137 appearances of his career so far, now over three full seasons in Philadelphia, has led the team to this point of completely walking away from a former prospect that they believed in. There\u2019s more than enough evidence that Ersson does not have what it takes to really be a reliable NHL backup right now.<\/p>\n
And with Dan Vladar showing that he can be more than just the career backup he has been, with now a .904 save percentage and 2.50 goals against average through 40 appearances, the Flyers don\u2019t need to instantly get their starter for the next decade. So, according to Pagnotta, it looks like they\u2019re going after a couple of interesting options.<\/p>\n
First, the less sexy name. Joseph Woll has been an above-average netminder for the Toronto Maple Leafs for the last three seasons. His best asset is his consistency, truly. He won\u2019t make mind-blowing saves and look like a sprawling Tim Thomas as he dives for pucks all around him, but he\u2019s just a technically sound goalie who will always keep your team in it. His .907 save percentage in 25 games as a rookie, then .909 save percentage in 42 games last season, and now a .904 save percentage in 30 games this season; there\u2019s little variance in his outputs and it all grades out to be a very solid player.<\/p>\n
Woll is turning 28 years old this summer and has two more seasons at a $3.67-million AAV. He doesn\u2019t have any trade protection on the next year of his deal, and the two remaining years would fit pretty well with the Flyers\u2019 own timeline. Vladar is under contract for just next season, so naturally it would make sense to keep this hypothetical Vladar-Woll tandem going beyond that (if the current performance stays the same), but top prospect and maybe the best goalie prospect in Europe, Yegor Zavragin is scheduled to be coming to North America before the 2027-28 season. <\/p>\n
Would letting Vladar walk and then making Zavragin the backup to Woll for his rookie year, make the most sense? Maybe. This is all fantasy for now.<\/p>\n
Flyers\u2019 interest in Jesper Wallstedt is interesting<\/p>\n
While Woll would gel in fairly seamlessly and give the Flyers two above-average options, acquiring Jesper Wallstedt would be more in the realm of trying to secure the starter of the future. <\/p>\n
Wallstedt is 23 years old and before this season, struggled mightily to live up to the former first-round pick selection, as he was toiling away with the AHL\u2019s Iowa Wild and not really able to lay down any consistent performances. But with the departure of Marc-Andre Fleury in Minnesota and Wallstedt being essentially given the backup position by default, the young netminder took full advantage and has put up a very good .913 save percentage and 2.77 goals against average in 27 appearances.<\/p>\n
He is destined to be some team\u2019s starting goaltender, and it probably won\u2019t be in Minnesota with the Wild committing long-term to Filip Gustavsson (and the fact that they have already reportedly been shopping Wallstedt, too).<\/p>\n
If the Flyers go out and get Wallstedt, it signals more than just getting someone to not be as bad as Ersson, but that the Flyers want to find their next guy. The timeline with Vladar would be cemented, as the more veteran goalie would have one year to be the senior in the crease, and then Wallstedt would fully take over for the 2027-28 season. But, Zavragin potentially coming for that season and creating an extremely young tandem of a then 24 and 22 year old at the start of that campaign, would potentially get messy.<\/p>\n
What could this trade look like?<\/p>\n
Of course, this all depends on the price. The Wild were reportedly looking to get an impact top-six<\/a> forward in exchange for Wallstedt during trade talks this season, and right now it\u2019s hard to see the Flyers being comfortable moving someone like Owen Tippett for a young goalie when they already have a couple on their way (and one, in Zavragin, having a very similar ceiling to Wallstedt).<\/p>\nFor Woll, it gets more interesting. The Maple Leafs are most likely trying to pull off a quick retool to turn their entire trajectory around with Auston Matthews and William Nylander still on the team, since they\u2019re going to not have two of their next three first-round draft picks. They could target someone like a young puck-moving defenseman, such as Emil Andrae and be comfortable with a solid draft pick attached to him, or just try to pry something like a good draft pick as the entire package.<\/p>\n
The Flyers sending the Leafs their own 2027 first-round pick back is certainly too high of a price for two years of an above-average goalie, but something like a second-rounder feels much more palatable.<\/p>\n
We won\u2019t know until any potential deal goes down what the price will be, but we do know that the Flyers are looking to add a very good goaltender to Vladar for next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week\u2019s trade deadline did not prove to be too fruitful for the Philadelphia Flyers. The biggest move…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-523856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}