Dan Vladar went into the 2025 offseason with a couple of important objectives in mind.

The first, of course, was to find a new team that would give the unrestricted free agent a real chance to take the next step in his career. He found that with the Philadelphia Flyers, who quickly inked Vladar to a two-year, $6.7 million contract on July 1.

In his introductory video conference call with the local media, Vladar said, “I wasn’t satisfied with my role in Calgary. I want to keep moving forward. I just felt like Philly is the best spot for me. I’m 100 percent confident I have a lot more.”

A new contract secured, Vladar turned his attention toward preparing for the opportunity he now had coming. There were parts of his game that needed attention.

There were two specific areas, in fact, that Vladar aimed to refine: making saves through traffic, and improving his skating to move laterally and be in more control of his six-foot-five, 209-pound frame.

Practicing saves through traffic isn’t easy to replicate in the offseason. That’s been something that he’s been working on with Flyers goalie coach Kim Dillabaugh.

“I’m not trying to be too aggressive, I’m still more trying to be patient on those plays,” Vladar said this week. “It’s more being patient and playing big.”

The skating was something that he really dialed in on, though, with Radek Jiratko, the goalie coach for Kladno in Czechia, who has been working with Vladar for more than a decade. As a tall, lanky goalie, Vladar was too often all over the place in and around the crease earlier in his career.

In fact, Flyers coach Rick Tocchet, who saw Vladar plenty when they were both in the Pacific Division, suggested that getting the goalie to move from side to side was something he would preach to his Vancouver Canucks.

“There was a book on him — how was he laterally?” Tocchet said.

Said Vladar: “My overall skating, especially lateral plays, was a bit of a struggle. For taller goalies, it’s more challenging going side to side, fast and efficient. I spent a lot of time kind of changing my stance a little bit. More feet underneath me, not trying to get too wide. Eyes on the puck first, and just allowing my body (to move) as fast as possible and still be mobile to react to pucks.”

When Tocchet saw Vladar in training camp, he recognized fairly quickly that there was improvement. Tocchet awarded Vladar the crease on opening night, and he’s essentially been the No. 1 goalie ahead of Samuel Ersson ever since.

“What I saw in training camp and exhibition, you could tell he put the work in,” Tocchet said. “I’m a big believer that goalies being under pressure (have to remain) calm, and not be sliding everywhere. I see that. I see a guy that slides over, but then he’s big. He stays there. I think he worked on that a lot this summer.”

The result is a goalie who’s been the Flyers’ early-season MVP. Headed into Sunday’s home game with the Colorado Avalanche, in which he’s expected to get the start, Vladar is 10-5-1 with a .906 save percentage, 2.59 goals-against average and a 10.7 goals-saved above expected mark (per MoneyPuck). A team that’s been starved for reliable goaltending, particularly last season when they had the worst save percentage in the NHL, is getting it from Vladar.

Looking calm and under control in the net is often the product of technique combined with good anticipation, and Vladar has shown both this season. As one of the tallest goalies in the NHL, he’s never going to have the quickest feet, but his skating has looked noticeably more agile and efficient.

This save against Nashville on Oct. 30 shows several small details that are paying huge dividends.

Vladar defaults into the butterfly and reverse vertical horizontal (RVH) positions quite often when the puck is low in the zone. It seals the ice in case an unexpected shot or deflection puts the puck on net, and it works better for Vladar than most for two main reasons.

The first is obvious. Vladar is gigantic, so he simply takes up more of the net, even when he’s down. The second reason is how light he is on his knees. Rather than dropping hard and sitting deep into the RVH, Vladar only lowered his pad enough to seal the ice while putting the minimum amount of pressure on it.

Notice how high Vladar’s hips stayed when he put the right pad along the ice, as opposed to sitting back on his skates. It was crucial on this play because when the pass was made across the ice, he wasn’t stuck with all of his weight against the post.

Vladar had excellent body control to get across for the shot. He led with his eyes, which is something he noted was an emphasis in his offseason training. He rotated his hips to point his left skate at his endpoint and pushed off the post to gain depth all in one motion. That’s the type of efficiency he and Tocchet are talking about.

It wasn’t an overly-explosive-looking push, but the efficiency of his movement bought him extra milliseconds to get his feet set well before Justin Barron released the shot, which exponentially increased his odds of tracking the puck and making the save. He is square, on angle, has plenty of depth and his feet are set. When a goalie this big is moving this well laterally, he’s hard to beat.

Vladar has also shown good anticipation this season, which adds to his efficiency on lateral plays. This backdoor save against the New Jersey Devils on Nov. 22 was a perfect example of that.

Vladar began this two-on-one rush at the top of his crease, but once Devils forward Timo Meier reached the faceoff dot, he retreated toward his goalline. It’s a case of Vladar maximizing his size. He knows once Meier gets that close to him, his 6-5 frame covers most of the net anyway, so the additional depth isn’t as necessary. By backing up, Vladar reduces the distance he needs to travel to reach his far-side post in the event of a pass, which is exactly what happened.

Compare that to how Vladar read this similar odd-man rush against the Seattle Kraken in late October. He once again started at the top of his crease, but he read that Kraken forward Jaden Schwartz (No. 17) was shooting. Rather than retreat, he held onto his depth and made the save.

Now, back to the save against the Devils on Nov. 22. At this point, Vladar still had to remain square to the puck to respect the shot threat, but the moment he read Meier was passing it across to Jesper Bratt (No. 63) on the backdoor, he rotated his right skate back to the goal line to flatten out and prepare for a lateral slide.

You can actually see Vladar begin this movement before the pass was even made. In order to push to that far post, he had to completely rotate his hips flat along the goal line. By anticipating the pass as early as he did, Vladar took care of the rotation and got his pad flat along the ice before Bratt even received the pass.

It’s a spectacular save, one that’s the result of an excellent read and all the lateral movement work Vladar put in over the offseason. He made a nearly identical save, with all of the same technique and anticipation at work, in the opening minutes of his very next start against the Florida Panthers.

Vladar has been fantastic on backdoor chances this season, which is a big reason he ranks fourth in the NHL in high-danger save percentage (.863). That number is way up from last season (.779), and it’s his highest mark since the league began tracking location-specific save percentage in 2021.

He has always had the competition level to excel at high danger shots from in tight, and his long legs help him stretch to cover the far side post better than most. With his improved skating, body control and the confidence to read plays and anticipate passes, he has hit another gear this season.