Since Ron Hextall the Flyers have had no franchise goalie.Ron Hextall had a win loss record of 240-172 with the Flyers. Since his last game in the 1998-99 here are the Flyers goaltenders. These are the major goalies.
1999-00 John Vanbiesbrouk 25-15 and Brian Boucher 15-9
2000-01 Roman Chechmanek 35-15 and Brian Boucher 8-12
2001-02 Roman Chechmanek 24-13 and Brian Boucher 18-16
2002-03 Roman Chechmanek 33-15 and Robert Esche 12-9
2003-04 Robert Esche 22-11, Jeff Hackett 10-10 and Sean Burke 6-5
2005-06 Robert Esche 22-11 and Antero Niittymaki 23-15
2006-07 Antero Niittymaki 9-29, Martin Biron 6-8, and Robert Esche 5-9
2007-08 Martin Biron 30-20 and Antero Niittymaki 12-9
2008-09 Martin Biron 29-19 and Antero Niittymaki 15-8
In the last 9 seasons the Flyers have had 8 goalies with a combined record of 337-258 the winning percentage of .556 while Ron Hextall had a winning percentage of .582 thats a plus winning percentage of .26. The other big difference is playoffs while with Ron Hextall the Flyers went to 3 Stanley Cups Finals and missed the playoffs 3 times and only 2 times when he was a full time starter. Since Hextall retired they only have missed the playoffs 1 time but have not found that goalie to take them to the Finals. Think about this year Ray Emery,Micheal Leighton, and Brian Boucher have a combined record of 37-30. They need to have a franchise goalie. The question is how. The simple answer is free agency in 2010 the only real good goalie available is Nabokov from San Jose and he is 33 and that is no long term fix. The draft is always an option but the Flyers do not have a first round pick but they can find one in the later rounds and maybe they might find that diamond in the rough.They also have Johan Backlund who they got last offseason. The other option is the trade market and the latest rumor is espn.com is reporting that the Flyers are intersted in trading for Bruins goalie Tim Thomas. Thomas who has fallen out of favor in Boston is 15-17 this year but he was 36-11 so maybe a change of scenery maybe helpful. Its not the only reason but its the biggest one imange for a moment if the Flyers traded for a Roberto Luongo who is 267-251 in that span and most of that was with the Panthers this year Roberto is 37-19. The other biggest question was should the Flyers trade for a goalie at the trading deadline and they should have, imagine if they traded for a Dwayne Roloson from the Islanders or Vokoun from the Panthers. They did not know at the time that Micheal Leighton would go down but when Emery went down they should have traded for depth.
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