New Flyers goalie Dan Vladař says he’s coming to compete. His underlying numbers are intriguing.

Dan Vladař had some nerves leading into July 1.

It was expected, considering it was the goalie’s first time hitting the open market, when you’re putting yourself out there and trying to figure out whether you’re Sally Field and people really like you or not.

So he, of course, checked in with his Czech buddies — you’ll probably recognize the names: Michal Neuvirth, Radko Gudas, Jakub Voráček, Jaromir Jágr — when he heard Philly was interested.

“Everybody suggests the best things about Philadelphia,” he said via Zoom from Czechia. “So, since the first time I heard about the organization, that they had some interest in me, I really wanted to come. So I’m happy it worked out, and I can’t wait to be going there.”

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The expectation going into the season is that Vladař, who signed a two-year, $6.7 million contract ($3.35 million average annual value) with the Flyers on July 1, will work with Sam Ersson, either as a backup or in tandem. He doesn’t want to know what the plan is, and just wants “to show up as ready as I can, and I’ll play my best hockey.”

Vladař said he is excited to work with Flyers goaltending coach Kim Dillabaugh, who is heading out to Prague to see him this summer, and to meet Ersson, a training buddy of one of his ex-partners with the Calgary Flames, Jacob Markström. Each will arrive in the area a little early before training camp, and while they haven’t spoken yet, Vladař sounded an awful lot like Ersson in his approach.

“I think the way it should be is whoever is going to play the best should be playing,” he said. “So obviously I’m going there to play as many games as I can, but I’m there for team success. So whoever is going to be hotter at that time should be playing. So that’s my view, and I’ll do my best to play my best hockey and to help us win.”

The question is what the Flyers will look like in front of Ersson and Vladař. Rick Tocchet — who saw Vladař twice last season when he was running the Vancouver Canucks bench — is expected to bring a change of style and systems.

According to Kevin Woodley, InGoal Magazine’s senior editor and a goalie guru based in Vancouver, the change in coach should not only help Vladař, who often took the workload of the toughest opponents in Calgary, but Ersson, too.

“So, expected save percentage is basically how we measure environment for a goalie, right? Like higher is an easier and lower is a harder environment. The Flyers had three of the eight hardest environments for their goaltenders last season,” Woodley said, of goalies who faced at least 250 chances. “[Aleksei] Kolosov’s expected save percentage last year was .872; that’s the lowest in the NHL among that 250 chance cut-off. Sam Ersson’s was .880, which is sixth lowest, and [Ivan] Fedotov is .882, which was the eighth lowest.”

Despite John Tortorella’s established reputation as a defensive-minded coach, the statistics don’t lie. The Flyers goalies faced a lot of high-quality scoring chances, including odd-man rushes on a nightly basis.

“Expected save percentage is, based on the quality of chances that they faced,” Woodley continued, noting Clear Sight Analytics, which uses 34 points of data and was created by former NHL goalie Steve Valiquette.

“So what is the average NHL goalie expected to stop based on the quality they faced? And an average NHL goalie would have save percentages of .872, .880, and .882, based on the quality that those guys faced last year.”

Kolosov and Fedotov did a little worse than their expected save percentages at .867 and .880, respectively; Ersson actually did a little better than his expected (.880) at .883. For comparison, the top of the league — Calvin Pickard, Connor Hellebuyck, and Andrei Vasilevskiy — had expected save percentages of around .903.

And let’s be honest, even using the eye test, it was evident how many odd-man rushes the Flyers were giving up last season.

Now, while all three Flyers goalies underperformed — and playing consistently in a bad environment can be taxing and have a “negative cumulative effect” — the expectation is that things could get better under a structured coach like Tocchet.

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Vladař had an .898 save percentage last season overall, but, while he was dreadful when the Flames were shorthanded —his .802 SV% ranked 47th out of 51 goalies who were on the penalty kill for at least 100 minutes — he graded out well above expected at five-on-five. According to Natural Stat Trick, at five-on-five, he tied for 15th in the NHL — with Sergei Bobrovsky and Ilya Sorokin — with a .919 save percentage among goalies to play 1,000 minutes. He also had the 18th-best goals saved above average (5.15), among goalies with the same playing time qualifier at five-on-five. And, according to Money Puck, he actually had the fourth-best save percentage on high-danger unblocked shot attempts at five-on-five (.918).

“I think he has a high floor. So there’s a really good consistency level, which you want,” said Woodley, who does a weekly radio hit in Calgary talking goalies. “I don’t know how high his ceiling is, and that’s not a criticism, we just haven’t had many chances to see him really take the net and get on a roll. ... Saying he’s a high-floor guy is a compliment, because you want consistency, right? You don’t want bad goals. And I think you look at that even strength, like good even strength results, that kind of shows you that.

“He’s always going to give you a pretty high level,” he added. “It’s just, what’s the ceiling? And I don’t know what it is. I’ve had other goalie coaches wonder if it might not be the highest ceiling — and I do think there are goalie coaches around the league that look at Sam Ersson in this same regard; they really think he’s a consistent, steady, high-floor guy, but they don’t know how high the ceiling is.”

Woodley, NHL.com’s Vancouver correspondent, watched a lot of Tocchet-led games — and the goalies who played for him — the last 2½ seasons. Tocchet stresses limiting east-west play, slot-line plays (plays across the slot), and limiting turnovers and odd-man rushes.

Calling up those Clear Sight Analytics, Vladař struggled with screens the last three seasons overall, and on the penalty kill, he’s struggled with rebounds and one-timers. The expectation under Todd Reirden, who is now in charge of the penalty kill, is that the Flyers will be better than their 77.6% effectiveness this past season.

“I think if the defense improves, and I believe it will under Tocchet, because I saw it here in the first year for Vancouver ... having high-floor guys is a good thing there, because it’s an environment that isn’t asking you to stop bullets in your teeth every night. And it might be a really good marriage, right? It might be a really good fit; the numbers will reflect better because they’re not being asked to do that as often as they were in the past, and they can just sort of play their game.

“As things get more predictable behind a better defensive environment, you give yourself more of a chance to stay in plays longer and maybe pull out more of those saves than you would have when everything is unpredictable. ... It’s hard to play assertively and confidently when everything is as loose as it appeared to be in Philadelphia last year.”

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Vladař is looking forward to the opportunity to get into the net and prove that he’s got a higher ceiing — and hopefully more often than in years past. He hasn’t played more than 30 games in a season, which he did this past year — he was injured for most of 2023-24 and shut down in early March — but is ready to take the next step in his career.

“That’s another reason why I wasn’t satisfied with my role in Calgary, and I want to keep moving forward. And I just felt like Philly is the best path for me going forward,” he said. “So yeah, I’m 100 percent confident that I have a lot more in me. But, whether it’s going to be over 30 or under 30, it all depends on how am I going to be playing and how Sam is going to be playing? So I’ll just do my best, as I always did. But at the same time, I’m super confident in that I can be playing more games for sure.”