Alex Lyon

Alex Lyon grew up in Baudette, Minnesota, a small town near the Canadian border, and went on to play college hockey at Yale — a path that eventually led him to nine consecutive seasons in the NHL across five different organizations. At 33, he is in the middle of the most active stretch of his career, currently wearing number 34 for the Buffalo Sabres.

Lyon's arrival in the NHL came with the Philadelphia Flyers, where he made his first appearance in 2017-18, going 4-2 in 11 games with a 2.75 goals-against average and a .905 save percentage. His workload with Philadelphia remained modest over the following three seasons — 2 games in 2018-19, 3 in 2019-20, and 6 in 2020-21 — before a brief two-game stint with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2021-22 closed out his time in that part of the league.

The 2022-23 season marked a significant turn. Lyon signed with the Florida Panthers and made 15 appearances, going 9-4 with a 2.89 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage. That season also brought his first NHL playoff experience: he started for Florida in the first round against the Boston Bruins, posting a .902 save percentage across three games and going 1-2 before Sergei Bobrovsky — returning from illness — took over the crease for the remainder of the run that reached the Stanley Cup Final. It's worth noting that in that same 2022-23 season, Lyon played more games in the American Hockey League (23) than in the NHL (15), a detail that underscores the dual-track nature of his career to that point.

His time around Bobrovsky left a clear impression. As Lyon said on Episode 262 of the InGoal Radio Podcast, "I had a pretty good game plan of how I wanted to approach things, how I wanted to operate on a daily basis, and once I saw Bob, everything was just cemented for me. Like, 'Okay, I'm on the right track.'" ^[1]

From Florida, Lyon moved to the Detroit Red Wings, where he would find the most sustained NHL run of his career. In 2023-24, he started 44 games for Detroit — his career high to that point — going 21-18 with a 3.05 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage and recording 2 shutouts. In 2024-25, he appeared in 30 games for the Red Wings, going 14-9 with a 2.81 goals-against average and a .896 save percentage.

It was during his Detroit tenure that InGoal Magazine connected with Lyon for what became a substantial body of work. InGoal Magazine has covered Alex Lyon in one podcast appearance, eleven Pro Reads, and one InGoal article. The podcast conversation — Episode 262 of InGoal Radio — took place in the summer of 2024 and touched on topics ranging from his approach to mental clarity to the details of how he wears his equipment ^[1]. His toe ties, specifically, became a recurring thread: Lyon described wearing them with a 5-6 inch gap, a setup he credits to studying Carey Price and one he says creates coverage width in his butterfly that would not otherwise be natural to his body ^[2].

That technical depth carried across nine Pro Reads entries produced during and after his Detroit stint, each examining specific save situations from Lyon's own perspective. Among the topics he broke down: how he uses human nature and shooter psychology to anticipate passes on 2-on-1 rushes ^[3], how he prioritizes the short side to force predictable decisions from opposing players ^[4], the role of RVH positioning in low-post power play situations ^[5], and how watching tendencies — knowing, for instance, that Nikita Kucherov has a specific corner-pass that few others attempt — shapes his reads during 6-on-5 situations ^[6]. InGoal members can find the full breakdowns in those Pro Reads entries.

Two additional Pro Reads entries arrived after Lyon had moved to Buffalo. One examined a save made shortly after entering a game in relief against the Edmonton Oilers — a sequence that, as Lyon explained, had as much to do with preparation as execution ^[7]. A second, produced during Buffalo's push back into the playoff race, broke down a rush sequence involving Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies of the Toronto Maple Leafs, with Lyon describing his approach in terms of patience and feel rather than active decision-making ^[8].

"Setting up too early — and I've been thinking about this a lot lately — you just lose your net so easily," Lyon said in that Pro Read. "And so, I've been trying to be more patient on my setup." ^[8]

In the 2025-26 season with Buffalo, Lyon has appeared in 36 games, going 20-10-4 with a 2.77 goals-against average, a .907 save percentage, and 3 shutouts — numbers that represent personal-best marks across several categories in his NHL career. His career totals through 149 regular-season games stand at 71 wins, 48 losses, 15 overtime losses, a 2.93 goals-against average, a .903 save percentage, and 7 shutouts across more than 8,076 minutes of ice time.

That 2025-26 season also brought Lyon's most extensive NHL playoff experience. After the Sabres qualified for the postseason, Lyon took over as starter in Game 2 of the first round and went 4-0 against the Boston Bruins with a .950 save percentage and 7.05 goals saved above expected — the third-highest total in the playoffs to that point, according to Clear Sight Analytics. He then encountered difficulty in the second round against the Montreal Canadiens, allowing five goals in consecutive games before re-entering the series in the third period of Game 5 ^[9].

Panthers goalie coach Rob Tallas, who worked with Lyon during his Florida tenure, described him to InGoal as someone who "understood the game, and he understood his skill set in the game, and he understood his size, he understood his movement." Tallas added: "He's so intelligent to recognize his strengths and weaknesses, and then stay focused on that." ^[9]

A May 2025 InGoal article by Colin Hodd explored how Lyon navigates the mental swings that come with a career like his — available to InGoal readers ^[9]. The headline phrase came from Lyon himself, drawn from his podcast conversation: "I understand my game, I know how I want to play, I know how I want to be, and I cannot let anything affect that. It's like an egg, a little baby bird, that you just have to cradle all the time." ^[9]

That consistency of approach — across five teams, nine seasons, long stretches in the minors, and brief windows in the NHL — is the thread running through Lyon's story. As he put it on InGoal Radio: "I'm a puck stopper first and I'm a goalie second. I'm out there to stop the puck. Everything else comes after that." ^[1]