Sam Ersson starts against the Blues, but John Tortorella says he wants to ‘get a look’ at Aleksei Kolosov as the backup

Last week, coach John Tortorella said, “Let’s face it, we have a goaltending situation.”

Yeah, things were getting a little spooky. Although the issue was never about Sam Ersson, the No. 1 goalie who will start Thursday against the St. Louis Blues, there were question marks about the other part of the Flyers’ tandem.

For the moment, they may have found a solution.

“I’m looking at [Aleksei] Kolosov right now,” Tortorella said Thursday. “That’s the way it is.”

Kolosov, 22, was called up from Lehigh Valley on Saturday and made his NHL debut in the Flyers’ 4-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens the following day. An athletic, quick netminder, he stepped into the backup role after Ivan Fedotov, 27, struggled to find his footing, allowing four or more goals in each of his three starts.

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“Ivan had some games. We weren’t happy with his game,” Tortorella said. “We’re going to look at Kolosov. So that’s how I feel about it. I’m not sure where it all goes as the grand plan as we keep on going here, because we also have to think about Feds, too, to get him some time.

“But right now, my whole focus is on the hockey team trying to get some traction at the beginning of the year.

“Feds had a chance. We’re going to look at Kolosov. Kolosov will back up tonight, and if I take out Ers, Kolosov is going to get the next game.”

Both Fedotov and Kolosov came over late last season from the Kontinental Hockey League. The 6-foot-7 Fedotov has not acclimated well to the NHL game and all the traffic that frequents the front of the crease.

But the 18 guys in front of the goaltender hadn’t been helping, either. Starting the season with one win in the first seven games was a little ghoulish. The term disconnected was thrown out consistently, and the analytics and the eye test would tell you the Flyers weren’t working together as five-man units.

In Games 8 and 10, the Flyers found their game. They battled for a 7-5 win against the Minnesota Wild on Saturday and skated away with a 2-0 win against the Boston Bruins on Tuesday. Ersson was in net for each.

“Our team plays really well in front of him,” Tortorella said on Thursday. “I think they respect him and know how hard he works. It’s one of the most unique positions that it’s basically kind of your heartbeat of the team. I think they play very well in front of him.”

With the issues on the ice and Ersson the only goalie accumulating wins — he has won three of his six starts — how will Tortorella handle his rotation? He said he overloaded the Swedish netminder over the second half of last season, so how does he, or can he, ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

“I won’t. I hope I don’t,” he said adamantly. “[Goaltending coach Kim Dillabaugh] and I have constant conversations about the schedule ahead of us. Especially [since] we’re only 10 games in. Obviously we’re trying to figure out the backup position, but it’s not going to be at the expense of Erss.”

There‘s been a lot of chatter this season about the Flyers’ line combinations and how many there have been. Between starting lineups and in-game changes, the different trios are as many as the stars over Philly on a clear night.

Will Tortorella be dressing up like a mad scientist for Halloween at the Wells Fargo Center? He said the other day, “It’s not like I’m a mad scientist back there just trying to throw things around,” saying it with evil hands and all.

He won’t be, at least to start the game against the Blues. For the first time this season, he will keep the same forward lines for two straight games. But whether Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde during the game is never out of the question.

» READ MORE: Sean Couturier’s hat trick on Saturday provides hope he can get back to being a productive center for the Flyers

“We went to those lines, they were lines we used a little bit last year, so we tried it that way,” Tortorella said. “I still don’t think we developed a whole [heck] of a lot of offense, but we defended better. You guys [the media] talk about it, I would love to keep the lines together.

“But I’m going to use my gut and my thought process when we’re playing a game. If I think it’s stale, I’ll change them again. But I’d like to try to keep them together. So we’ll start the same way tonight.”

The groupings will see Sean Couturier center Travis Konecny and Matvei Michkov — a line that has clicked and will be together for the fourth straight game. Center Morgan Frost will skate with Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster, a trio that along with defenseman Emil Andrae created Foerster’s game-winner in Boston. Scott Laughton will play between Joel Farabee and Bobby Brink, and Ryan Poehling will center Noah Cates and Garnet Hathaway.

“Obviously with struggling in games that we’ve had, it’s tough to keep it together, so switching it up is something we need to do,” Poehling said.

“But, no, having the familiarity is great. I think last game, especially, Catesy and Garney, played a lot with them last year, and just knowing how they play, I think we all play a structure that we know from one another. And that’s kind of the biggest thing about that is just knowing that congruence with one another, which is nice,” Poehling said.

The biggest helper here is knowing where someone will go when he has the puck and, more important, where his linemates will be without it. For Poehling, skating with two guys he knows helps with the breakouts and forecheck — two things the entire team has struggled with recently. “Subconsciously you get to know,” he said, especially about Hathaway, whom he kills penalties with.

“It’s that communication without eye contact or verbal communication, or understanding how a guy sees the game and sees the ice and where they find open ice in the game,” Hathaway said.

For guys like Foerster and Frost, it‘s about finding their game again. Foerster‘s goal was his first since the season opener in Vancouver, and his first at five-on-five. Frost has five helpers but hasn’t found the back of the net this season. Maybe the same trio can help with consistency?

“I’m trying to find it wherever I can right now, definitely struggling offensively,” Frost said. “It’s not about me, it’s about the team, and I thought we played, for the most part, a pretty good game last game. ... If you can go through a couple of games, I think maybe find some consistency, maybe it’ll help me personally.”

Egor Zamula remained a healthy scratch. … After Thursday’s game against St. Louis, the Flyers host Boston at 1 p.m. Saturday and then on Tuesday travel to Raleigh.