Alexei Kolosov has a new agent as the goalie prospect’s future with the Flyers remains murky

While Matvei Michkov will suit up for the Flyers this season to much fanfare, the future of one of the organization’s other top prospects seems to get murkier by the day.

That prospect is goaltender Alexei Kolosov, who arrived in North America from Belarus last April and played two games at the end of the season for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. There have been reports this summer out of Belarus that Kolosov, 22, was homesick in Allentown last season and was eyeing a return to Belarus to play for former club Dinamo Minsk of the Kontinental Hockey League.

On July 1, Flyers general manager Danny Brière addressed the reports about Kolosov’s unhappiness with the organization and chalked up his absence from the team’s development camp that week to “logistics.”

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“He’s played three years pro. Usually, that’s about the cutoff for our guys [attending development camp],” Brière said. “We just gave him the option to stay home a little longer. ... I know there’s the rumblings, but we’ve been in discussions with him and he’s told us there’s nothing to that.”

Brière added that the Flyers still expected Kolosov to report for training camp in September. In his appearance on the latest episode of the Nasty Knuckles podcast, which was released Monday, Brière provided an update on the Kolosov situation.

“Nothing has been said directly to us,” Brière said on the podcast. “We were trying to get some answers. And again, Alexei doesn’t speak English, so we can’t just grab the phone and call him. And it was tough to get answers from his agent or clear answers. There’s always dancing around the pot.”

Brière also revealed that Kolsov recently changed agencies. He is no longer with CAA Sports and will now be represented by Dan Milstein of Gold Star Sports Management Group, a source confirmed to The Inquirer.

“He just changed agent in the last few days, so we were just notified of that,” Brière said. “I don’t know exactly what it means, but no, I can guarantee you he was treated really well [in Lehigh Valley]. You’ve just got to keep in mind, it’s not easy ... You know, you come from Belarus, you come over here, and you don’t speak the language. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any other Russian-speaking players. You’re late in the season. The plan with him was just to give him the chance to come over and see what it’s like, to help his transition this year. So that was the plan.”

Kolosov, who signed his entry-level contract with the Flyers on July 9, 2023, posted a .907 save percentage and 2.39 goals against average in 47 games last season while on loan from the Flyers with Dinamo Minsk. He was the No. 1 goalie for Minsk for the better part of three seasons and compiled a 49-56-10 record with a 2.56 GAA and a .909 save percentage over 120 KHL games.

“It was very clear from the get-go that he was just going to play in a couple games [for the Phantoms last season], because we didn’t want to put him in a bad situation,” Brière said. “He had played a full season already. [He] didn’t know the coaching staff, didn’t know the style, and the game over here is a lot more physical, even for a goalie, so we just wanted to give him a couple games and help his transition going into this year. That was the plan all along.”

While Brière was coy about what the changing of agents means for the Flyers, it could suggest Kolosov is either trying to find a way to get out of his contract or to return to Minsk for another season on loan. (The Flyers would retain his NHL rights in a loan scenario.) With Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov expected to be the goalie tandem at the NHL level, the Athletic’s Kevin Kurz tweeted Monday that a league source told him that Kolosov’s preference is to play in the KHL this season rather than the AHL with Lehigh Valley. But Brière doesn’t sound as if he is open to that possibility.

“We’re hearing all these rumors. We haven’t had a full or clear answer at this point, but if he wants to play hockey, he has to come over here,” Brière said on the podcast. “He’s under contract with the Flyers. He’s not allowed to play anywhere else. We want him here, so we’ll see. In our mind, he has to report. ... So we’re waiting to see, we’ve asked the agent, ‘OK, what’s going on? Can you give us an answer, we want to make sure he is coming.’ But we haven’t had, again, a clear answer at this point.”

The Kolosov news is another blow to a Flyers organization that is no stranger to recent drama and holdups when it comes to top prospects. Last season, forward Cutter Gauthier, the team’s No. 5 overall pick in 2022, demanded a trade because he did not want to play for the organization for undisclosed reasons. He was subsequently shipped to Anaheim in January for defenseman Jamie Drysdale and a second-round pick.

The Gauthier news came after the team had to wait two years longer than expected for Fedotov to come over to North America. Fedotov was arrested in 2022 for evasion of military service and forced to serve a year in the Russian Navy before playing last season for CSKA Moscow, after the team and league violated an International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) ruling by refusing to honor his valid contract with the Flyers. The 27-year-old Fedotov landed in North America late last season following the conclusion of his KHL campaign. He has since signed a two-year, $6.5 million extension with the Flyers and is expected to be the team’s backup this season.

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