According to a report, top goalie prospect Alexei Kolosov told the Philadelphia Flyers he did not wish to return to North America after the club saddled him in a hotel in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for a month during the Belarusian’s AHL stint with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Kolosov, 22, finished the 2023-24 KHL season with Dinamo Minsk on loan from the Flyers, appearing in his last KHL postseason game on March 12. One month later, on April 12, Kolosov was on the bench for the Phantoms for his first AHL game.
The Flyers’ top goalie prospect watched on as journeyman Cal Petersen and Felix Sandstrom mostly controlled the crease in Lehigh Valley; Kolosov played in only two games– a 5-4 win over the Bridgeport Islanders on April 13 and a 2-0 loss to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on April 20. Kolosov did not appear in any of the Phantoms’ Calder Cup playoff games.
Inside the AHL‘s Tony Androckitis reported Saturday morning that a source claimed,” (The Flyers) put him in the hotel by himself and he felt isolated, especially since his English isn’t great.” Keep in mind that Kolosov, drafted 78th overall by the Flyers in the 2021 NHL Draft, has spent his entire career in Belarus up to this point and was not paired up with or surrounded by anyone who he could communicate with at a meaningful level.
It was an incredibly short-sighted move on the Flyers’ behalf, especially considering how Ivan Fedotov joined the NHL ranks in early April in a massive surprise to everyone. Fedotov had Egor Zamula and perhaps Slava Kuznetsov to lean on, and now Matvei Michkov is joining the fold as well.
Was Kolosov not as important to the Flyers that they could not further accommodate him for only a few weeks?
Flyers general manager Danny Briere seemed to admit the organization’s mistake in a June Q&A with Philly Hockey Now, telling us, “I’m sure the loneliness, it makes for long days. We didn’t have any other Russian-speaking players (in Lehigh Valley), you know? He didn’t have his friends, his family, or his girlfriend with him,” and that “. . . we’re learning along the way, too. We realize it was a tough situation for him.”
Now that Kolosov passed on attending the Flyers’ annual development camp early in July, it seems like his status for the upcoming season is truly up in the air, and a return to the AHL has been completely ruled out. The young goalie and his girlfriend both still follow the Flyers on Instagram, so the situation might not be in dire straits just yet.
That all said, the Flyers are certainly in the red now and find themselves in danger of losing their best goalie prospect over a silly and preventable mistake.
