Sam Ersson’s career so far has been trial by fire, as much as the Flyers have tried to avoid that.
Last season, he was the only goalie head coach John Tortorella could reliably keep calling on, because Carter Hart was gone to face sexual assault charges, and the next options behind him just couldn’t keep up.
But Ersson kept answering the call, trying to keep the Flyers alive in the playoff race, even when he was completely exhausted, and Tortorella knew as much.
And this season, he’s right back in net doing it all again, trying to backstop the Flyers through their early struggles.
On Tuesday night in Boston, the 25-year old netminder made 25 saves to help push the Flyers to a 2-0 shutout of the Bruins. Then on Thursday night, coming back home to South Philly and the Wells Fargo Center to face St. Louis, he stopped 20 of 21 Blues shots to get his team to two straight wins for the first time this year.
The Flyers have been playing with much better, more defensive-minded structure over the past couple of games in the way of tight checking and plenty of blocked shots, but Ersson has given them the extra security to try and re-establish that until they could finally start seeing some results.
His numbers don’t look considerably pretty at face value – an .897 save percentage and a 2.72 goals-against average through seven starts – but make no mistake, he’s been huge for them.
“You know he’s going to show up for every game,” defenseman Nick Seeler said of Ersson after Thursday night’s 2-1 win over the Blues. “And that he’s gonna make some huge saves for us and keep us in every game. That’s a goalie you want to play in front of.”
And a goalie that can make life just a bit easier, even when other things aren’t going right.
The Flyers have their issues right now. Defensive play is starting to turn around, but steady goal scoring has been tough to come by, and the backup goalie situation is an open book, with Aleksei Kolosov getting the current shot at it after Ivan Fedotov stumbled out of the gate.
Ersson, in his first year knowing he was going to be the No. 1 goaltender, has been one of the few consistencies so far, and maybe the most valuable one of all for the Flyers…
Because already, Tortorella has been back to calling his number again and again.
And again and again, he’s been giving the Flyers at least a chance.
“We’re gonna try to do it the right way with him here in a long season,” Tortorella said postgame Thursday, calling back to last year’s overuse of Ersson. “But I think from camp on, I think he has played really well.”
The upcoming schedule through November is working in the Flyers’ favor a bit in that respect. There won’t be any back-to-backs until the end of month, which will offer a few breathers, though granted, they still do need to find out about their backup situation along the way as well.
“But I’m not afraid to ride him,” Tortorella continued about 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.”
Ersson is still ready to answer the call though, and arguably better equipped to do so now than he was last year amidst the Flyers’ seemingly endless run of goaltending chaos.
He’ll go in, and he’ll give them a chance.
“I think for me, it’s kind of finding a way, knowing I gotta shut out – like, take my mind off things when I’m away from the rink to kind of rest up mentally,” Ersson said from the Flyers’ locker room after Thursday’s win of his readiness to take on more starts. “It’s a long season, you know? So I know it’s gonna have its ups and downs. It’s gonna be tough sometimes. You just kind of gotta find a way to run through it.”
Bobby Brink scored to give the Flyers the lead back late in the third period on Thursday night, but they were hardly in the clear.
The final seconds were ticking down. The Blues had the puck down in the Philadelphia zone. The extra attacker was out for St. Louis, and they were pressing to tie it.
Blues defenseman Justin Faulk, with space up top, slid a pass through to Brayden Schenn, who had a clean look at the net after four Flyers got caught looking at the puck and drifted too far toward it.
He held on long enough for the whistle, and soon after, so did the Flyers for the win.
“I kind of picked it up at the last second there,” Ersson said. “I think the puck maybe almost went through, but [Travis Sanheim] came in there behind me, so that’s the small details to kind of give us results.”
“I mean, we’re force-feeding him,” Tortorella said of Ersson’s overall career trajectory. “He’s not supposed to be in this position right now in his career. We were supposed to develop him, so a lot of things are coming at him pretty quickly.”
But he keeps answering the call.
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