There’s value in drafting a goalie just about any time you possibly can.
And for the Toronto Maple Leafs – a team that has struggled to find consistency in the crease for quite some time – it’s even more true. Since 2000, the Leafs have selected 17 goalies in the draft. A total of three have played at least 100 games – Mikael Tellqvist (2000), Tuukka Rask (2005) and James Reimer (2006).
Of them, Rask is the most notable, but he played all 564 career games with one of Toronto’s top rivals, the Boston Bruins. Drafting a goalie that not only has an impact but sticks around for a considerable period has been a real challenge for the Leafs since essentially the start of the NHL Draft. There’s hope Joseph Woll, taken 62nd in 2016, will help buck the trend, but it’s still early days.
So when the Leafs took Timofei Obvintsev 157th overall in 2024 – two years after snagging triple overager Dennis Hildeby at No. 122 – many in the hockey industry liked what the Leafs were doing. There’s a saying in the scouting world: when in doubt, draft a big European. At 6-foot-4 out of Russia, Obvintsev – an overage pick himself – met the criteria.
Russian players have their rights held indefinitely, and with goaltenders developing quite slowly to begin with, there’s little risk in taking a chance on one. The New York Rangers selected Igor Shesterkin in the fourth round in 2014, while the Philadelphia Flyers are putting a lot of hope behind 27-year-old Ivan Fedotov this year, nearly a decade after taking him in the seventh round.
That extra runway helps, especially in a country where winning now is prioritized over the development of younger players. That’s why Vyacheslav Peksa and Artur Akhtyamov, two other Russian keepers in the Leafs’ system, have had slow paths to where they are today.
Obvintsev hasn’t played a ton of meaningful hockey the past two years – Elite prospects had him down for 15 total games in 2022-23 and 18 this past year with the MHL’s Krasnaya Armiya Moskva. Obvintsev was part of a three-goalie rotation where, at points early on, he was more of the third-stringer. The stats look good, though – a .921 save percentage in the NHL would put you among the upper echelon. But it’s easy to inflate goalie stats in a junior league with very few high-profile, dangerous goal-scorers. A total of 30 goaltenders had as good, or better, of a save percentage as Obvintsev, with many playing as many as double or triple the number of games.
So, what’s the draw here?
The size and extra development help, but there are projectable traits here. Scouts have raved about Obvintsev’s blocker because he moves it as quickly as anyone. He’s got such quick hands to begin with, but flashier glove grabs aren’t rare to come by. It’s the blocker side where goalies often fall short, but he’s as active as it gets in both blocking and re-directing pucks where he wants them to go. For a long time, we were seeing bigger goaltenders who just relied on their size to stop shots.
As more of a hybrid goaltender, Obvintsev does stand up a lot to make saves higher up. Results-wise, it’s a bit of a mixed bag for him because he is prone to allowing stinkers from poor play-reads. But for the most part, he’s extremely athletic and active in the net and doesn’t allow a lot of cross-ice passes.
“There’s sometimes a disconnect between his brain and his body,” a scout said. “He’s physically capable of some spectacular saves, but his instincts often bite him in the butt.”
But, man. When Obvintsev was on it, he was a true game-changer in the MHL. No game exemplified that more than his 48-save performance against MHK Spartak Moscow back in February. He was lights out, with multiple scouts citing that dominant performance in a 5-2 victory as the one that helped solidify him as a legit NHL prospect.
“Obvintsev was on nobody’s radar in his draft year,” another scout said. “But then you noticed him any time he played last year, especially down the stretch. He’d take over games and help his team win games they had no business winning.”
The next few years will be interesting. Obvintsev should be Krasnaya Armiya Moskva’s starter this season, and it would be good to see him get a few starts in either the KHL with CSKA Moscow or, at the very least, some VHL game action. The other two goalies with Obvintsev’s MHL team are 17, so he’ll have the edge in both age and experience.
Obvintsev is far from NHL-ready. Heck, Auston Matthews might hit the open free-agent market before Obvintsev is ready. The Leafs could be in a significantly different situation than they are now. But there’s a lot of hope that Obvintsev can get steady work in this year and solidify himself as one of the best goaltenders in Russian junior hockey. From a raw trait perspective, Obvintsev has all the makings of someone who, with enough game loads over the next few years, could be a long-term option for Toronto. He was a late-round pick, but one worth taking a flier on because there’s absolutely no rush to force him up the lineup. And, in reality, his development has only just begun.
But many think Obvintsev could end up becoming something for Toronto. Many scouts have looked at what he has done in his limited playing time the past two years and still consider him to have one of the highest ceilings of anyone from the 2024 NHL Draft.
The size, athleticism, the speed, the blocker. It’s all there. Let’s just see more of it.
