For Detroit and Chicago, goalie prospect future is especially bright

A quick preview of more to come tomorrow.

This is admittedly a shorter post and later in the day.

I’m traveling for work tonight, headed to New York City for some meetings on non-journalism things, and spent most of my day writing a nearly 3,000-word story on goalie prospects for the fine folks over at EP Rinkside.

I’m not gonna steel the thunder from the folks over Rinkside, and reveal individual rankings here — that story will be out tomorrow, you should read it — but I did think it would be good to write something accompanying here.

Without giving away the rankings, I had two NHL teams with a pair of goalies in the top-10 for affiliated prospects — the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks.

(It’s important to note that “prospects” for this exercise include any player currently eligible to win the Calder as the NHL’s Rookie of the Year.)

If you read this space that shouldn’t be too surprising. The Red Wings took Sebastian Cossa in the first round of the 2021 NHL Draft, and while he’s had some bumps, I was personally probably too harsh on his performance in the past.

I’m also a big believer that Trey Augustine will be an NHL goalie some capacity, even if he continues to fail the “off the bus” test when scouting. Augustine is remarkably average when it comes to tools and height, but he’s one of the most composed and efficient goalies I’ve seen in the prospecting space.

Before Artyom Levshunov signed with Chicago, I had Michigan State as a national championship pick in my mind for this coming NCAA season because of Augustine. Levshunov certainly hurts those chances, but because of Augustine, the Spartans are still a sneaky good bet to go deep.

When it comes to Chicago, the Blackhawks have both Adam Gajan and Drew Commesso in my top-10. Commesso is currently playing in the AHL and is the better goalie right now, but Gajan has better boom potential, even with some struggles last season in the USHL.

Gajan also happens to have one of my favorite goalie prospect backstories.

Here is this from my EP Rinkside piece during last season.

But as Gajan puts it, no one in North America was looking for him. On top of that, any footage from the Slovak league left a lot to be desired for any scouting potential. So Gajan bought the GoPro, started posting it behind his net, and started sending clips to teams in the North American Hockey League. 

“I knew I would have to go to a lower league, I would have to earn things, so through my agent I figured it had to be the NAHL,” Gajan said. “So I would cut my clips, all my puck touches, and send them to teams.” 

The Chippewa Steel, now rather famously, gave the goalie his chance after viewing a 10-minute video clip from Gajan's GoPro. Chippewa brought Gajan over to North America and he turned heads in the 2022 NAHL showcase, started talking to NCAA teams, and then posted a .917 save percentage in 34 NAHL games. 

Tomorrow’s piece will be longer, I promise. But it was important to me that we delivered something on each weekday, even some of the busier ones like today.

As usual, thank you for reading and let me know what you’d like to read about as we slog our way through the offseason.