For a few tense hours, Philadelphia Flyers fans collectively held their breath as Dan Vladar went down holding his arm just 13 minutes into his preseason debut after a minor collision in the crease that preceded a goal.
That overshadowed everything else in Tuesday’s 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins, but good news would be on the way shortly thereafter.
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By Wednesday morning, the cause for concern dramatically decreased. Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet declared his starting goalie “day-to-day.”
“I think we dodged a bullet,” Tocchet said of Vladar and his injury Wednesday. “He’s in good spirits today.”
For a game-ending injury, that’s about as encouraging news as the Flyers and Flyers fans can get.
Vladar’s injury happened with 6:29 left in the first period, when he lurched forward to try and collect a rebound, lost his stick, and took light contact to his arm from Bruins forward Tanner Jeannot, who was skating by the net.
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The Flyers later confirmed it to be an upper-body injury and subsequently announced that he would not return to the game, leaving mop-up duty to Aleksei Kolosov.
Given that Vladar, 29, just signed a five-year, $27.5 million extension after leading the Flyers to their first playoff berth since 2020 with 29 wins in 52 appearances and 51 starts, the sight of him disappearing down the tunnel was enough to make the fanbase groan “here we go again” in unison.
However, it is worth noting that, while Tocchet wasn’t going to guarantee that Vladar would be available for the season opener against Pittsburgh on Sept. 30, it is certainly within the realm of possibilities here.
Another small silver lining of note: the Flyers sent goalie prospect Carson Bjarnason down to the AHL Lehigh Valley Phantoms with just two preseason games left to go, and two healthy goalies remaining in Kolosov and newcomer Joseph Woll, who made his unofficial Flyers debut against Washington in Hershey on Monday.
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Tocchet said Wednesday he would be “very comfortable” giving Woll some early burn to start the season, and the Flyers can always bring Bjarnason back at any time to give Woll or Kolosov a night off for one of the remaining preseason games, but again, we’re talking about a matter of a week.
It would be simpler to just keep Bjarnason on the roster and avoid yo-yoing him back and forth between Voorhees and Allentown as the Phantoms get started with their training camp.
That’s all to say that, yes, it certainly seems that the Flyers avoided a worst-case scenario with their No. 1 goalie, and this situation only reinforces the wise move to get Vladar some legitimate support in Woll earlier this summer.
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