Stolie the Goalie is Back!

Blockbuster trade between Nashville and Philadelphia

On February 27, 2017 the Flyers acquired Anthony Stolarz via trade with the New York Rangers. Stolarz remained with the organization just short of 5 years when they traded him to the Nashville Predators on January 21st, 2022. Now 3 years later, the Flyers have reacquired Stolarz and added forward Ryan McLeod, in a blockbuster deal for Casey Mittelstadt, Lawson Crouse, and a series of draft picks, including the recently acquired 28th overall selection in the 2025 draft.

Stolarz never suited up for the Flyers in a game during his tenure, but in Nashville he was an adept back-up, playing 44 games over the last 3 seasons with a 2.54 GAA and .910 Sv%. Regardless of never being a DCHL starting goaltender, the Flyers think he can help be a difference maker and push them over the hump in the playoffs.

The team entered the 24-25 season with at least a little skepticism of a 50-50 tandem including Filip Gustavsson and Ilya Samsonov. However, the results begged to differ, the Flyers were the runaway Jennings favorite throughout the season, consistently allowing the least goals against in the league right up until the final 5 game stretch, when they allowed 20 goals against and handed the Jennings to the Calgary Flames. 

20 goals against in 5 games is significant when you consider the team only allowed 161 goals against in the previous 77 games. “Well we only averaged just over 2 goals against a game [2.09],” Jon Cooper told reporters in the Flyers season closeout press conference, “We thought we were playing the right way, we allowed the least shots against in the season as well, but we were not able to translate that to the playoffs.”

The Flyers allowed 24.3 shots against per game during the season, that number jumped to 29.2 against per game in the playoffs. They got defeated in the 2nd round by the eventual cup winning New Jersey Devils, which was tragically reminiscent of their 3rd round loss to the 2024 cup winning Buffalo Sabres. The Flyers ended the playoffs scoring as many goals as they let up, the goals against were not the best and if we know anything about this team, they were not going to run it back after another highly disappointing 2nd round loss.

The Flyers now find themselves with a glut of goaltenders, Gustavsson and Samsonov are the only two on one-way contracts, but the team did not add Stolarz to bury him in the minors again, he is set to play a leading role on the perennial contender. Stolarz is only on a 1 year $1m contract and will be an unrestricted free agent next offseason, that seems to be an opportunity for the young Sam Ersson to finally break into the DCHL. That would leave one of Gustavsson or Samsonov on the trade block, even though Samsonov just extended for 5 more years at $1.9m, the speculation is that he would be the one eventually moved, but only time will tell.