Flyers Still Haven't Found a Backup, and Camp Is Almost Here

Dan Vladar is signed for five years and accounted for. Everything behind him is not. As I noted a few days ago, the Flyers went through last season with essentially one netminder carrying a meaningful workload, and nothing in the weeks since has changed that. Training camp is close, and the backup crease remains empty.

The market hasn't waited. Florida locked up depth goaltender Akira Schmid on a two-year extension in late July, the kind of quiet organizational housekeeping Philadelphia hasn't managed to replicate. These aren't glamour moves — they're insurance, and right now the Flyers don't have any.

The forward injuries to Cates, Tippett, and Murchison get more attention because they're visible on the injury report, but the goaltending gap is structurally just as significant. If Vladar misses time for any reason, the Flyers have no established answer. That's a fragile way to enter a season where the front office has invested heavily in the core and needs things to go reasonably right.

My read: this is the one offseason item that still has a clean fix available, if the organization moves on it. Grebenkin is signed. Michkov talks haven't started. The backup crease is the quietest problem on the board, and it's been quiet too long.