VOORHEES, N.J. – While Team Czechia’s quest for an Olympic medal ended with a semifinal loss to Canada, the Winter Games were still an unforgettable experience for goaltender Dan Vladar.
The Flyers’ netminder saw action when he started against France and played well in a 6-3 win. It’s Philadelphia’s hope that Vladar can now pick up where he left off before the break. In 33 games, he sported a 2.47 goals-against average and .905 save percentage.
He resumes the season off a treasured experience at the Olympics.
“It was awesome,” he said. “You never know as a hockey player if you’re going to have a chance to go back to the Olympics again. So I was trying to enjoy every moment of it. Just that one overtime goal (by Canada) and it might have been a different story, a happy ending for us.”
As for the gold-medal game, Vladar was quite impressed with the play of American winning goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who was sensational in a 2-1 overtime victory over Canada.
“Congrats to them, he’s a really good goalie,” Vladar said. “He’s been good his whole career, so congrats to him. He’s big, he’s really patient, so I like that about his game. And he doesn’t chase the game, he just let’s the pucks come to him.”
Ersson looks ready
No. 2 goalie Samuel Ersson is once again battling through another injury-plagued season.
The Olympic break came at a fortunate time. It gave him a few weeks to heal, which is good news for the Flyers, who have several back-to-backs ahead, starting Wednesday in Washington.
“He’s in a good spot now,” said assistant coach Todd Reirden, who filled in for head coach Rick Tocchet during the Olympics, where Tocchet was an assistant for Team Canada. “We purposely designed these five-on-five games like this to get guys more accustomed to it (game action).
“We feel like we’ve checked off every box we could in these five days of practice. Major credit to the leadership group and the staff – they went all in preparing to give ourselves the best chance. Then we know it’s 26 games in 50 days.
A lot of hockey and our guys are excited about it.”
One more American
Minnesota native Bobby Brink, who won an NCAA scoring title with Denver University in 2022, was among the American-born Flyers proud of what took place Sunday in Italy in the gold-medal game.
“Obviously American hockey is in a pretty good spot right now,” Brink said. “A lot of players have come up through the U.S. (development) programs. We’ve always been one of those top teams. I just think it was kind of a big goal that always eluded us. A couple teams could have won it, it was a good tournament.”
Practical practices
Defenseman Nick Seeler likes the way the Flyers responded to a week of practices during the break. It gave the team a chance to work on some stuff.
“I think these practices have been super solid for our group,” he said. “I think we were able to work on structure, five-on-five, D-zone, you name it, we worked on it this week. I thought we had a good attitude going into every practice. That’s good for us leading into next week.”