{"id":839614,"date":"2026-08-02T10:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/839614\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:29:10","slug":"cas-top-20-canucks-summer-prospect-rankings-4-aleksei-medvedev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/839614\/","title":{"rendered":"CA\u2019s top 20 Canucks summer prospect rankings: #4 Aleksei Medvedev"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to our collective CanucksArmy top 20 Vancouver Canucks<\/a> summer prospect rankings. Today, we have our 4th-ranked prospect, goaltender Aleksei Medvedev.Aleksei Medvedev<\/p>\n

Team: London Knights (OHL) | Age: 18 | Position: Goalie | Height: 6\u20193\u2033 | Weight: 180 lbs | Catches: Left | Drafted: Second round, 47th overall, 2025 | Mid-season rank: #2<\/p>\n

If you thought Aleksei Medvedev\u2019s tough sophomore OHL season was going to make him plummet down our rankings, think again. I couldn\u2019t help but laugh when a couple of commenters yesterday were preemptively upset that we\u2019d dare put Medvedev fourth in our rankings after the season he put up with the London Knights in 2025-26. And that\u2019s mostly because we\u2019ve seen overreactions to goaltenders\u2019 junior seasons before.<\/p>\n

Take Ty Young as a very recent (and topical for us) example. Young had tools and intangible abilities that we believed in, so he didn\u2019t free-fall down our rankings despite losing his WHL job to a younger goaltender and putting up mediocre numbers as a fourth-year WHL player in 2023-24. I remember the outrage to that, with some people even telling us that Young would never play pro games in North America, let alone reach the AHL and eventually get a taste of NHL action.<\/p>\n

Young turned pro in 2024-25, putting up an eye-popping .926 save percentage in the ECHL and a respectable .904 save percentage through 11 AHL games. What matters much more to us than results in junior is a goaltender\u2019s process. How are they getting beat? Are they making adjustments? Are they losing their net in a way they haven\u2019t before? More importantly, how are they holding up mentally? Was a rough season going to be a roadblock, or a learning experience?<\/p>\n

I remember talking to Young at Canucks training camp ahead of the 2024-25 season. At that point, he still had no idea where he was going to end up. He wasn\u2019t sure if he\u2019d be given the chance to turn pro, or if he\u2019d have to head back to the WHL, where he\u2019d likely need to find a new team after Joshua Ravensbergen took over the Prince George crease the season prior. Young still had a smile on his face talking about the adversity he\u2019d faced. He was complimentary of Ravensbergen. He wasn\u2019t feeling sorry for himself, and was eager for his next chance to prove himself. I walked away from that conversation feeling confident that Young would bounce back. And that\u2019s what he did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like, obviously, I had a little bit of an off year. I was off to a really good start, but then I lost my game a little bit,\u201d Medvedev said about his season in London. \u201cBut I thought it just gave me a really good perspective on the game of hockey. When you\u2019re in that discomfort of not playing your best, you keep looking for stuff to improve your game. So I was able to find so many great things that helped me and explore them a lot more in this offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this year just made me realize how important that is, and I never really faced that much adversity. Especially as a second [round] pick, you\u2019re coming into a year with a lot of expectations, and then you\u2019re not quite playing up to them. Just realizing how important that is and learning from it, just using it to your benefit, that\u2019s my biggest mindset. I feel like that might have been one of the best things that\u2019s happened to me. Especially that early on in my career, it\u2019s really valuable experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The things that stood out about Medvedev in his draft year haven\u2019t changed. The size, athleticism, compete level, technical ability, puck-tracking ability, and more are all of high quality. He uses his long frame and flexibility to recover on second chances and make highlight-reel saves that would be in the back of the net against most goalies. His lateral pushes are explosive, and his ability to seal the lower portion of the net is still downright impressive.<\/p>\n

Medvedev\u2019s baseline level of elite intangible qualities gives him a high enough floor that makes us firmly believe in his potential. To put it simply: technique and details can often be cleaned up somewhat easily when a goaltender has the physical tools that Medvedev does. He\u2019s not even going to turn 19 until September, and has plenty of time to make the necessary adjustments to his game as he continues to develop.<\/p>\n

All of this is to say: Sleep on Aleksei Medvedev at your own risk. For us, he\u2019s unquestionably the Canucks\u2019 top goaltending prospect, and absolutely deserves a spot in the top five, even after a down D+1 season.<\/p>\n

Projection<\/p>\n

Ceiling:\u00a0NHL starter, and maybe even an elite one. The tools are all there.<\/p>\n

Floor:\u00a0Typically a goaltender\u2019s floor is that they don\u2019t ever make it to play pro hockey in North America, and even if they do, it\u2019s a season or two in the ECHL before heading to play professionally overseas. We\u2019d say for Medvedev that his floor is certainly higher than that. It would be downright shocking if he doesn\u2019t play NHL games, even if as a backup. We\u2019ll call his floor that of an AHL netminder.<\/p>\n

ETA:\u00a0Whenever he turns pro, Medvedev will follow the path of other Canucks prospect netminders like Ty Young and Aku Koskenvuo, both of whom spent time in the ECHL and AHL last season. Realistically, Medvedev could spend the next two seasons in the OHL, but if he puts together a strong enough season in 2026-27, the Canucks might feel that turning pro is the right next step for his development. He\u2019s already signed to an entry-level contract, so really, anything is possible. We\u2019ll put his NHL ETA at around 2030-31, when he\u2019ll be 23 years old.<\/p>\n

PRESENTED BY VIVID SEATS\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome back to our collective CanucksArmy top 20 Vancouver Canucks summer prospect rankings. Today, we have our 4th-ranked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-839614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}