Why John Tortorella is confident Sam Ersson will bounce back from his shaky start

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Flyers coach John Tortorella claims to not be much of consumer when it comes to the things written or said about his hockey team, but he does make an exception for a specific purpose, he said: He wants to know if the players are self-evaluating correctly.

In the case of Sam Ersson, the team’s backup goalie, reading and listening to what Ersson says has provided the longtime coach a path to get to know the player a little bit better.

The goaltending position is a unique one in the NHL, especially for teams like the Flyers that have a trusted goaltending coach. Tortorella’s main focus is on the team’s 20-plus skaters. The goalies are sort of just over there in Kim Dillabaugh’s world.

“I didn’t know a damn thing about him and I still don’t really know him a lot,” Tortorella said Friday regarding Ersson.

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What Tortorella does know is that things have not gone well for the 24-year-old Ersson in his first real taste of being a professional backup. He enters Friday night’s game vs. the Buffalo Sabres with a 4.91 goals-against average and a .763 save percentage through his first 172 minutes of game action this season.

And as he prepared for his third start of the season, two days after replacing Carter Hart in the first period Wednesday night, Tortorella again expressed confidence that Ersson was going to bounce back. The coach said he hadn’t said a word to the goaltender, and didn’t plan on it.

“Sam has evaluated himself properly. I don’t need to say a word to him,” Tortorella said.

How long the net is Ersson’s remains to be seen. The Flyers officially said Hart is day-to-day with the “mid-body” injury that forced him to leave the game Wednesday. The team recalled Cal Petersen from Lehigh Valley on Thursday for the trip to Buffalo. It’s unclear if Ersson will be given starts in back-to-back games, or if Petersen will get the net Saturday vs. his former team, the Los Angeles Kings.

Tortorella was predictably coy when asked if Petersen would be around for the foreseeable future or if Hart would be back sooner than expected.

“No idea,” Tortorella said.

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Ersson has been visibly frustrated after each of his appearances. He showed some flashes of his talent last year when the Flyers called him up, and he played pretty well for the Phantoms at the AHL level. But after winning the backup goalie job out of training camp, things haven’t gone as planned.

“I just want to win. That’s really it,” he said Wednesday, after allowing two goals on nine shots in 49-plus minutes of relief during a 5-2 loss. “I want to help this team win some hockey games.”

“You saw last year how good he was,” Scott Laughton said. “Probably a couple games he wants back ... We have belief in our goalies.”

If Ersson was looking for a confidence booster heading into Friday night, maybe the building itself could provide it. Ersson’s first and only NHL shutout came last season inside KeyBank Center, where he made 28 saves in a 4-0 Flyers win on Jan. 9.

The Flyers dominated the Sabres during Wednesday night’s loss, but Tortorella said he expected a better team on its home ice Friday. And with two-way center Sean Couturier out (lower-body injury), it became even more likely that Ersson would see more pucks coming his way than he did Wednesday. Tortorella said he expected his team to “rally around” Ersson. But when it came to the player himself, he had read and heard all he needed.

“You get to know him by how he carries himself,” Tortorella said. “I think he’s got a really good confidence to him where he doesn’t cross the line. This has been a test for him, as far as trying to keep his confidence. It’s probably a little bit new for him. So we’re going to watch and see how he develops.”

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During the Flyers’ strong start to the season, Tortorella cautioned that losses were coming. He said he knew a lot about his team then, but would learn a whole lot more after the losses mounted. The Flyers entered Friday having lost five of six, but they weren’t losses in the way Tortorella probably envisioned. They had played well for the most part against a slate of playoff-type hockey teams. It wasn’t like they were on the other end of a blowout on multiple occasions.

Is this a different kind of adversity?

“I don’t consider it adversity. I consider it the process of learning how to finish games,” Tortorella said.

“It does give you a little bit of foundation that we’re doing things the right way. Stay with it and then add to it. That’s how you get over it.”

Adding to the equation was Couturier’s absence Friday night. It’s unclear when he suffered his lower-body injury, but considering the team didn’t practice Thursday, it’s fair to assume he got nicked up during Wednesday’s game. “Day-to-day” is a bit vague when forecasting how long a player is out for. Could he be back Saturday night vs. the Kings? Could he be out the entire trip to California next week?

Those questions, applying to both Couturier and Hart, remain unanswered.