Flyers address positional needs by signing goalie Dan Vladar, center Christian Dvorak in NHL free agency

The Flyers got cooking quickly on Tuesday.

General manager Danny Brière clearly had a list and crossed off what he needed one by one.

A goaltender to play alongside Sam Ersson? Checkmark with the signing of Dan Vladar to a two-year contract worth an average annual value (AAV) of $3.35 million.

Depth at center after trading Ryan Poehling and maybe wing after the news of Tyson Foerster potentially missing time at the start of the season? That one got crossed off in one fell swoop by signing center Christian Dvorak to a one-year, $5.4 million deal. They also signed center Lane Pederson to a one-year, two-way deal worth $775,000 in the NHL, but he will likely be a minor-league replacement after not qualifying Elliot Desnoyers.

» READ MORE: Christian Dvorak’s faceoff dominance, Dan Vladar’s Johnny Gaudreau mask, and more about the Flyers’ free agent signings

And the Flyers got inexpensive depth on defense by signing Noah Juulsen ($900,000) and Dennis Gilbert ($875,000) to one-year deals.

Added plus: Dvorak and Juulsen previously played for new Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet.

“It’s not like he came in and said, I want those guys,” Brière said about Tocchet. “They were already a target of ours before going in, and, obviously, we asked him his opinion of the players. He had good things to say, but it’s not like he came in and he decided those are the guys we wanted to have.”

Vladar, who turns 28 next month, spent the last four years with the Calgary Flames organization. Last season, he worked in tandem with Calder Trophy finalist Dustin Wolf and went 12-11-6 with a 2.80 goals-against average and .898 save percentage.

But take a peek under the hood, and the 6-foot-5 Vladar’s numbers are much more intriguing. 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.

The Czechia native, who was originally a Boston Bruins draft pick, has a 49-34-16 career record in 105 career games with a GAA of 3.00 and save percentage of .895. He is expected to be part of the Flyers’ goalie tandem with Ersson.

“Dan Vladar told us very early on that he saw an opportunity. He wanted to come in and compete in Philadelphia. So, we jumped on it,” Brière said, noting the asking price for other goalies on the market was steep. “For us again, the most important [thing], ideally, we were looking for a one-year deal, but we realized that to get some help, we needed to step it up a little bit.”

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Dvorak, 29, played for Tocchet from 2017-21 with the Arizona Coyotes and is expected to slot into the fourth-line center hole left by the trade of Ryan Poehling to Anaheim. He spent the last four seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, and this past season, he had 12 goals and 33 points in 81 games.

The Illinois native won 55.8% of his faceoffs last year — including 56.08 at five-on-five — and took the majority in the defensive zone. Dvorak was also a key penalty killer for the Canadiens and could also assume Poehling’s role on the penalty kill.

“I‘m excited about him. I think one of the enticing parts, too, for him is the opportunities that he’s going to have,” the GM said. “It’s no secret that we’re pretty thin in the middle. [Sean] Couturier and [Noah] Cates really are the only two, for sure. We hope that [Trevor] Zegras can play center as well, but there’s opportunities there for him, probably more than he would have seen somewhere else, and I feel that that was probably very enticing for him.

“So get a big body like that [at 6-1, 190 pounds] that can play a 200-foot game, win faceoffs for us, I think he makes us a better team having him down the middle.”

While Vladar and Dvorak were the headliners, Brière also rounded out the fringes of the roster. Juulsen is a 6-2, 201-pound right-shot defenseman who played the last four years in Vancouver, including two-plus seasons under Tocchet. He brings size and grit and is someone who could provide depth and potentially slot into the open spot on the right side with Rasmus Ristolainen out for six months after undergoing surgery on a right triceps tendon rupture in late March.

“We wanted one-year deals, bigger guys,” Brière said of Juulson and Gilbert, who is a 6-2, 216-pound New York native. “We’ve talked in the past about how we’re a little small on defense. We wanted to bring a little bit of size, especially with Risto missing training camp, possibly the early parts of the season. We wanted to bring them a little bit of size again.

“If they perform well, we want to keep them, but we wanted to make sure that we don’t block our young guys past next year,” Brière said. “That was really important to us, but the fact that they bring grit and size is important.”

Gilbert and Pederson are depth moves, with Gilbert projected to compete for an NHL job as a sixth or seventh defenseman and Pederson, who has not played in the NHL since 2022-23, in all likelihood, is bound for Lehigh Valley.

Finally, the Flyers remain in the mix for Russian free agent Maxim Shabanov, according to Brière, who said he’s had daily talks with his camp. The winger was the Kontinental Hockey League’s third-leading scorer last season with 67 points (23 goals, 44 assists) in 65 games.

“I’m still waiting on that. Yeah, we’re waiting. We’re hopeful,” said Brière. “We were told that we’re one of a few teams that he’s considering still, but we have no inkling of which way he’s leaning at this point.”