Dan Vladar

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

52 appearances, 29-14-7, a 2.42 goals-against average and a .9057 save percentage with no shutouts. His career figure across 157 games is .8978, so this was 8 thousandths above his own standard and the best season of his life.

The Physical Game

6-5, 209, and he plays the size properly — deep, square, unhurried. Against a club that concedes perimeter volume by design and finished 4th in the league in expected goals against, that is close to an ideal pairing.

The lateral movement is ordinary and it is why the career figure sits where it does. When a play moves him across, he is beaten.

The Mental Game

A third-round pick who spent 6 seasons as somebody’s backup in Boston and Calgary before being handed 50 games. 29 wins out of it, and .903 over his last 10.

Nothing about the season suggests a man who found the workload difficult.

The Intangibles

Philadelphia’s goaltending still came in 12 goals worse than the chances it faced, which is the split rather than Vladar: he stopped .9057 across 52 games and Woll stopped .8984 across 39 with a 3.34 goals-against average.

The league median was .896. Vladar cleared it comfortably and Woll did not.

He is 29, and this club finished 4th at preventing chances and 26th at creating them. The goaltending is not the problem here. The scoring is.