One of the major storylines of the Philadelphia Flyers’ 2024-25 season was the handling of rookie goaltender Aleksei Kolosov. It was a story about a year in the making, so let’s give you a little refresher on the timeline of events.
Rumors had emerged at the end of last season that he wasn’t interested in coming back to North America after an unfriendly couple weeks playing with the Phantoms to end the 2023-24 campaign, then those rumors became reality in September and October when he held out during training camp.
Briere held firm during the fall and refused to loan him to the KHL, and the KHL wasn’t interested in stabbing the Flyers in the back by just signing him anyway, which left Kolosov with little option but to submit and make the trek to North America under duress.
He started the season with the Phantoms but was quickly recalled thanks to an injury to Sam Ersson. Kolosov did temporarily overthrow Ivan Fedotov for the second spot on the depth chart, which was eventually lost back after a string of sub-par play. He played a brief stretch of AHL games in late-January before being recalled before the Four Nations break so he could go on vacation. Overall, Kolosov spent five and-a-half weeks on the roster where he didn’t play a single game, before being demoted back to the AHL where he played five games before once again being recalled to the Flyers’ roster where he only played two games in a month. He was not demoted back to the AHL for their playoff run.
Kolosov’s final tallies in 2024-25 were:
12 AHL games with a 3.11 goals against average and .884 save percentage.
17 NHL games with a 3.59 goals against average and .867 save percentage.
All that ring a bell? Good.
So how in the hell did the battle with their top goalie prospect go about as poorly as it could’ve? Well in the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Aleksei Kolosov, both carry blame. Two things can be true, the Flyers messed this situation up royally starting in the offseason AND Kolosov could’ve more willing to do what’s best for the team.
Kolosov’s attitude seems to be a problem mashed with a bout of home-sickness made him quite the curveball and it sure seems like the Flyers have absolutely no idea what to do about it.
First and foremost the fact that he spent well over half the season on the main roster but played less than a quarter of the games is a wildly terrible skew. Even though he himself wasn’t good, neither were the other two-thirds of that trio that truly prevented him from seeing NHL ice time considering he was available to them more often than not.
From Kolosov’s perspective, it seemed like an NHL or bust mentality. Which, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with had he actually been good enough to hang around at the NHL level. But it was pretty clear early on that he wasn’t at that level yet.
Typically, rookie players go to the AHL and develop. Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily an uncommon thing within the Flyers’ organization that they don’t do the best thing for the player when it comes to development. In most cases a trip to the AHL is a one-way ticket. It’s possible Kolosov did his homework and knew that his NHL odds were slimmer with the Flyers than they were with other normal functioning teams.
But if he had just been shipped to the AHL for most of the season to actually learn and adapt to the North American game, while Ersson and Fedotov were the disaster they were on the main roster, Kolosov may have actually been ready for a late-season call up. Their handling of the guy suggests that their top priority wasn’t development at all. It seems like they were all about letting him cash main roster paychecks without ever actually playing a game. Which is not great.
He’s not playing, he’s not developing, he’s not learning or improving, he’s just cashing main roster pay checks for doing nothing to help today or the future. According to PuckPedia, his minors salary is $80,000 while he gets the entirety of his $925,000 cap hit with the big club.
If you remember, the Flyers made some eyebrow-raising statements early in the season when they refused to hire a translator for their Russian players. Instead, skating coach Slava Kuznetsov was doing a bulk of the translating alongside Egor Zamula. That was even more intriguing when you consider part of Kolosov’s claims were that the Phantoms didn’t provide a translator at the end of the 2023-24 season either, which was one of the things that supposedly made him skeptical of rejoining the team.
This felt like a pretty big story that got swept under the rug. With Matvei Michkov debuting alongside Ivan Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov, they probably should’ve sprung for a real translator to help their adaptation to a new country. If Kolosov was already skeptical about returning, it’s easy to see how that kind of refusal by the Flyers doesn’t feel like a welcoming environment.
So what comes next? Well, he’s got one more year left on his entry level contract, so he should theoretically be back within the organization in 2025-26. Though the fact that he didn’t re-join the Phantoms for their playoff run still suggests that he isn’t about being a team player or actually learning.
There’s already been plenty of rumors that he isn’t returning to North America next season, but as of this writing are unsubstantiated.
The Flyers could just terminate his contract, it’s not a totally uncommon fate for underutilized international players, but you’d assume they wouldn’t want to just lose him for nothing considering he could join another NHL team in the near future, not that he’s given much of note so far to miss. He could be a throw-in for an offseason trade, but without the assurances of the player returning, he probably doesn’t have much value these days.
Giving up on a 23-year-old goalie whose ceiling is potentially high won’t be a popular move in hindsight no matter the turmoil he’s causing at the moment. Folks still talk about Sergei Bobrovsky nearly 15 years later, so if Kolosov goes elsewhere and succeeds, regardless of the context now, it won’t look great on Briere’s résumé.
The battle between the Philadelphia Flyers and top goalie prospect Aleksei Kolosov was an unmitigated disaster. Neither side comes out looking great, and as we wait for the next chapter to unfold, all we can do is sit back and wonder how it all went so wrong in the first place. One way or another, the Flyers organization needs to come with with a real strategy for this guy, because whatever it is they’re doing this season isn’t helping either player or team be better.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: Getty Images
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