Film Room: Vladimir Proskurin's talents may make him the 2026 NHL Draft's hidden gem

If you look back at previous NHL drafts, you will likely find a big‑name goaltender hidden away in the often-overlooked later rounds.

Stanley Cup Champions, Olympic Gold Medalists, Vezina Trophy winners, or even just solid starters have come from anywhere. Connor Hellebuyck, Jeremy Swayman, Dustin Wolf, Sergei Bobrovsky, Karel Vejmelka, Logan Thompson, and Igor Shesterkin are all current high-end NHL goaltenders who were passed on by every team multiple times over. 

Goaltending is a notoriously difficult position to scout and project. Talent is bound to slip through the cracks, and there’s almost always upside to be captured at any pick. Vladimir Proskurin is my bet to be that hidden gem, late-round steal at the 2026 NHL Draft.

That’s if he even gets drafted.  

Across North America and Europe, 55 goaltenders appeared in NHL Central Scouting’s final rankings. Proskurin was not one of them. In fact, no outlet has ranked or even mentioned him outside of Elite Prospects, where we ranked him 73rd overall in April.

Proskurin’s circumstances are likely to blame for why he hasn’t appeared on radars this season. He plays in relative obscurity on one of the weaker teams in the weaker silver division of the Russian junior league. MHK Atlant Mytishchi has only ever had one player drafted to the NHL in its 17-year history. He also hasn’t been selected to the Russian U18 team for any of their tournaments. On top of that, being listed at 6-foot-1, the drawbacks before he even steps on the ice have been too much for many scouts to consider him an NHL prospect. 

This isn’t surprising. There aren’t many goalies like him, but goaltending is a position of peculiarities and one-of-a-kind individuals. It's part of why so many love the position.

Proskurin will face significant challenges in making the NHL someday, and it is certainly bold to claim that he is among the best goaltenders in this draft. But as you’re soon to see, he has every reason for why NHL teams should take a bet on his potential. 

Elite athleticism and body control

Proskurin’s athleticism is top of the class. His out-of-nowhere big-save ability is simply astounding at times. His quick-twitch burst allows him to unleash staggering explosive power into his pushes in an instant and spread into wide extensions or the splits.

While Proskurin has both elite explosiveness and flexibility, his true separating trait is his body control.

It is exceptionally difficult to control your body while pushing as hard as you can and stretching out as far as you can. Being in the upper ranges of your mobility naturally causes your body to lock up. Many goalies will collapse, but Proskurin has an extraordinary ability to keep his chest up and hands in position as he flies across the ice in full extension. Staying vertical ensures that he meets the shooter while taking up as much net as possible. Since he does this so well, he’s able to take up more net on these plays than the average goalie despite his slightly undersized frame.

At the end of his save sequence, he can also better keep his structure afterwards. Instead of falling into a compromised position, he can recover rapidly and be ready for follow-up chances. He’ll even control his fall on top of pucks to get freezes.

Play reading, speed, and details

Despite his extensive highlight reel, Proskurin isn’t just a one-dimensional athletic goalie; much of his game from shot to shot is based on his intelligent play-reading ability, which allows him to leverage his athleticism in several less obvious ways.

It starts with his diligent scanning of the ice. He times his shoulder checks with lulls in the play, knows what he’s looking for, picks up threats, and integrates what he sees into his decision-making. 

A collection of small details builds his resume as a smart goaltender. When he reads a passing option, he flattens out his angle to make his pivot easier and loads his outside leg to get it ready to push. If he doesn’t see a passing option as a threat, he’ll play the shooter with confidence. At times, Proskurin will even manipulate shooters to play to his strengths by challenging to force a pass and leaning on his prowess in lateral coverage to make the save.

I love Proskurin's emphasis on angle before depth. He takes deeper routes to ensure he gets his angle right before taking depth. Another great habit is how he leads every motion with his head, which better visually connects him to the puck. 

Proskurin’s quick processing of the game synergizes with his physical speed. Being so explosive gives him an advantage in how he can approach a play. He knows he can beat dangerous passes while sliding, and has the read to know when he can and cannot do it. So, rather than sell out for a save, he can remain composed and look for other ways to gain an advantage. 

He often pops up after a slide to take a shot on his feet. This allows him to both have an edge to work off of and gain depth if the shooter hesitates. Proskurin will also stay tight in the butterfly, giving him better access to his edges. With that access, he can quickly change directions, control his slide, or adjust his angle and square.

Proskurin has a lot of great details to his game, little things he does to maximize his chance of making each save. These are indicative of a goalie thinking the game at an elevated level. At times, he might be doing a bit too much, but it’s promising to see a young goaltender with such a multifaceted game.

Technique, framing, and flashlights

Just as maintaining a large presence in the net is vital for Proskurin's athletic saves, maximizing net coverage is a key part of every play. With the speed of NHL shots, goalies have little time to react, so cutting down the angle and forcing shots into your body is essential.

First, Proskurin’s smart hand and chest placement set him up to make easy saves in the upper half of the net. He’s excellent at both projecting his hands out at the puck and framing them within the net. Projecting the hands, or holding them out in front of your body, makes them take up more net from the puck's perspective. Framing is ensuring that the hands are placed accurately to take up the open net, without covering space outside the net's frame or overlapping with your pads or chest. At the same time, his body control keeps his chest up to take up more of the upper areas of the net.

Second, he makes it extremely challenging to beat him along the ice. Utilizing his wide, low stance, Proskurin both covers the lower areas of the net and facilitates a quick drop. When he drops down, his butterfly is staggeringly wide. He’s able to flare his feet out super far and hold them there, which isn’t easy, and give the puck nowhere to go. Plays often end with shooters not being able to find the net to shoot at, holding onto the puck too long, and simply firing a shot into the pads when they run out of time.

Proskurin also diligently maintains the five flashlights technique. This is the concept that a goalie's head, two hands, chest, and stick are always pointed, as if they’re flashlights, at the puck.

Edgework

Beyond sealing off the bottom areas of the ice, having a wide butterfly allows a goalie to bring an edge down and move off it much quicker. With that edge, Proskurin can make a flurry of cuts to make micro-adjustments to his square and positioning, tightly pursue a puck in tight, or quickly route back to his posts.

Proskurin’s edges all around are very strong. He’s super fleet of foot, can make tactful and rapid adjustments, pivots with ease before explosive movements, can slam an edge into the ice to halt his momentum, and has great recoveries. He goes from standing to butterfly, up and down, with incredible fluidity that makes him dynamic when the puck is in tight.

Critiques

The goaltending room at Elite Prospects has been divided on Proskurin all year long. Our scouts have raised issues of over-aggressiveness, over-activeness, not setting his feet, and bad rebound control, along with concerns about the level of play.

He is very eager to attack shooters, aggressively gaining depth rather than setting his feet. This leaves passing options uncovered, recovery efforts even more daunting, and the save more difficult at times. Although there is some context to these tendencies. His defensive core, to put it lightly, isn’t a very talented group, and he is frequently forced to resort to unconventional tactics to bail them out. Speaking from personal experience as a goaltender, these scenarios motivate aggressive play, and I view this as an adaptation to his team more than a real problem. If he were to play behind a more even-keeled team, considering his cognitive strengths, I think he would adjust his game.

The issue that can’t be disputed is his bad rebounds. A drawback of the wide butterfly is a lack of rebound control off the pads. With a wider stance, you can’t kick out your legs to fire rebounds into the wall. Amplifying the issue, Proskurin doesn’t involve his stick nearly enough in controlling shots along the ice. Better controlling low shots is a vital change that needs to be made before a move to pro hockey, where bad rebounds don’t go unpunished.

Projection and elevating qualities

It is undeniable that projecting a goalie from an obscure MHL program in the weaker division of that league is far from an exact science. Yet, the story of an unknown goalie who bursts onto the scene in their early twenties isn’t uncommon. Goaltending is a volatile space. While skaters are only a couple of years out from making their NHL debuts, goalies still have five to seven years of development ahead of them.

If he doesn’t gain NHL interest, it may be hard for him to get the best opportunities to advance his game. Atlant Mytishchi doesn’t have a KHL or VHL team, so he will have to transfer to programs that may prefer their home-grown players. If he gets NHL interest, the CHL Import Draft may be his best bet with an NHL program to vouch for him. The CHL-to-NCAA route would be perfect for a talented but inexperienced goalie, such as Proskurin, who needs time to marinate.

Recent history has shown that Proskurin getting picked isn’t all that far-fetched. Just last year, Montreal drafted Arseni Radkov out of Tyumenski Legion in the third round. Colorado picked Ivan Yunin out of the Russian U18 league the year before. Radkov took the CHL route, as he just finished his first season in the QMHJL and is committed to play for the University of Massachusetts in the NCAA.

Proskurin isn’t a top prospect, at least not to anybody but a couple of our scouts. He’s a player who, if he is drafted, is a late-round selection. Within that range of the draft, the risk profile is more than acceptable relative to the upside. In the middle rounds, there will be few, if any, players left on the board with as much talent as him.

Proskurin isn’t just another one-dimensionally athletic goalie out of Russia. He has ceiling-raising traits both athletically and cognitively that give him a real chance to be a starting NHL goalie. His elite athleticism, keen perception and play‑reading, and mature technique justify announcing the name of this unranked, unknown, and underappreciated goalie at the draft in Buffalo this June.