It appears a top Flyers prospect will be making the jump from the KHL to North America. Unfortunately, it is not Matvey Michkov, but rather Alexei Kolosov. Kolosov is a 22-year-old goalie from Belarus who just completed his third season with Dinamo Minsk. He was picked by the Flyers in the third round, 78th overall, in 2021. Last offseason, Kolosov signed for a max entry-level contract last offseason but was loaned to Minsk for this season. He played pretty well this year as mostly a 21-year-old starting goalie in the second-best league in the world posting a 22-21-3 record with a 2.39 GAA, .907 sv%, and added four shutouts helping Minsk squeeze into a playoff spot as the worst seed in the West and would lose to the one-seeded Dynamo Moscow in six games. Kolsov did the best he could for Minsk posting a 2.21 GAA and a .925 sv%.
Kolosov’s KHL season is done, but he may not be done playing hockey this season. There have been recent reports that Kolosov is currently working to get his visa ready and come over to North America for the end of the season here. This will be a huge addition right now. Even though Kolosov most likely will play the remaining games in Lehigh Valley, it creates a lot more flexibility with goaltenders in the organization. After the Carter Hart news, Sam Ersson has been thrust into the starting role and has done a good job, but it is quite easy to see that at this moment, Ersson was doing better as a backup, or at most the 1B to Hart’s 1A. But looking even further into the goaltending situation since the end of January shows that the two goalies in the system with NHL experience and trust are Felix Sandström and Cal Petersen. Also, the word trust is getting a very liberal meaning here.
Felix Sandström has only called the Flyers organization home, at least in North America, and was seen as a legitimate starter for the Flyers, but that soon changed when Carter Hart was drafted the year after, and Sandström was envisioned by most fans as a good back up to Hart when they were both ready to play in the NHL. After Sandström made the move to North America in March 2018, he struggled in the AHL which would lead to a stint in the ECHL. He would turn around his play for the Phantoms. He became the backup for Hart starting the 2022-23 season, but by the end of the year, Ersson had taken that job. Surprisingly, Sandström signed back with the Flyers after rumors of displeasure about not being the backup, which only got murkier when Cal Petersen was traded to the Flyers. This is Petersen’s first season in Philly and it’s one to forget. Starting in the AHL with Felix, both goalies would come up at some point in the season before Hart left the team. Since Ersson has been promoted to the starter, Sandström and Petersen have both shared backup duty and both have been mostly bad to be blunt.
With a Kolosov addition, you have 4 goalies who could reasonably get NHL minutes while not sacrificing the goaltending in Lehigh Valley. All the reports that have come out surrounding Kolosov, they leave it pretty ambiguous about his future. We already know that the KHL prefers their young players to play in the KHL until they are good enough for NHL minutes, and Kolosov may not be quite ready for full-time NHL duties, even as a backup. That’s ok.
Dinamo Minsk has put out an Instagram post thanking Kolosov and wishing him good luck in Philly. Most likely, he will be following the same route that Marat Khusnutdinov took in order to get his visa to come to North America.
By Noah Caplan (@Phlyers24)
Photo creds: thehockeywriters.com
brotherlypuck.com 