Flyers Drafted Two New Goalies Is It A Sign?

The answer to all those questions is quite simple. At least, according to General Manager, Danny Briere.

Why draft two more goalies?

Because too many goalies are never enough. The Flyers know from experience how too many goalies are never enough all too well. In 2018/19 they went into the season with Brian Elliott, Michal Neuvirth, Anthony Stolarz, Alex Lyon and Carter Hart. Five goalies, two teams... should be enough, right? Two on the Flyers, two on the Phantoms and one stashed with the ECHL's Reading Royals. Someone gets injured, you have that ECHL goalie ready to move up to the AHL and you re-call Lyon or Stolarz. It all made sense and sounded great. Except nobody informed the injury bug this was the plan, and even if they had I don't think the bug would have cared much as one by one it plucked one goalie after the other until the Flyers were forced to look to the waiver wire for help adding Cal Pickard early in the season before losing him again on waivers and then plucking Mike McKenna off waivers late in the season.

The Flyers used a grand total of 7 goalies that season: Elliott, Neuvirth, Pickard, Stolarz, Lyon, Hart, and McKenna. That's a franchise record, and at the time was also a league record (I believe that has since been broken by the Blackhawks who used 8 goalies in one season.) If that's not proof too many goalies are never enough, I'm not sure what is.

Where will they play when they turn pro/come over from Europe?

This issue is still 3 or 4 years out from being an actual problem, so by the time it actually is a problem, it may not be a problem at all. Nobody knows for sure what's going to happen in the next 3 years. Guys could be traded or leave as Free Agents or something else could happen that prevents them from playing, so while it looks like the Flyers have "too many" goalies right now it may not stay that way by the time the two newbies are ready to join the Phantoms.

Is there a trade in the works?

No. As of now, Briere says there are no trades involving goalies or otherwise in the works. Now could that be a cover-up? Sure. He's obviously not going to tip his hand much if he is working on something, but the consensus from those "in the know" is he's not working on anything currently. Could that quickly change? Sure, but as of now what you see is what you get so the Flyers will head into training camp in September with Carter Hart as their starting goalie, and Cal Petersen, Felix Sandström, and Samuel Ersson all competing for the NHL backup job while (for at least another year) Kolosov continues to hone his craft and develop further in the KHL, and Bjarnason and Zavragin continue to develop with their respective CHL or MHL junior teams.

I know the previous two front offices have all fans extremely skeptical. We found it hard to trust anything they said, and as a result, we have transferred that to the new front office. They'll have to work doubly as hard to try to earn our trust and prove to us they actually mean what they say. Prove that sometimes there really isn't a smoke screen; that what we see is exactly what it is. Over time, as long as they don't do anything to break the trust they're working extremely hard to build, we'll get that. But for now, Briere is going to have to continuously reassure us, not only with his words but his actions, that what he says is actually true.