Kirill Zarubin: MHL’s hidden gem for the 2024 NHL Draft !
With the 2024 draft fast approaching, the TSLH Prospects team continues to track NHL draft-eligible prospects. In this draft profile, you’ll find a real gem hidden in Russia’s junior hockey. His name? Kirill Zarubin!
How can you find a rare gem that no one has ranked in the public lists and whose Elite Prospect profile was barely impossible to find? When I drew up my list of goalies to watch for my top 10 of the 2024 draft, I was looking at the statistics in the MHL. I wondered why so many keepers had good stats in this league. In fact, almost 50 goalkeepers have an efficiency rating above 0.900. In comparison, there are a dozen QMJHL goalkeepers in that range. In the WHL, the count stops at 20, while in the OHL, we’re talking about just ten goalkeepers at 0.900 efficiency.
It’s important to understand that the MHL has a solid gap between good and not-so-good teams. As a result, many teams in their own division have to contend with teams that score very few goals. In Kirill Zarubin’s case, what immediately struck me was his efficiency of over 0.900 while playing on a horrible team. And as the season progressed, his goal average dropped and his efficiency rose.
Only to realize that Kirill Zarubin was actually playing in 2022-2023 and at the start of the current season with AKM Junior in the MHL. A bottom-of-the-ranking team. This year, AKM Junior finished 34th in the MHL. Last year, they finished 33rd. Out of 37 teams, that’s pretty bad. Now, at the start of the season, Kirill Zarubin found himself, after a few games with AKM Junior, with the Mikhailov Academy. It’s a team in the top third of the MHL, but in a division with almost all the MHL’s best teams (SKA, Loko, Spartak and Dynamo). At Mikhailov Academy, in a big division and playing against the best teams in the circuit, Kirill Zarubin ends the campaign with a very interesting record:
| Team 2023-2024 | Record | GAA | % svs |
|---|---|---|---|
| AKM Junior | 4-11-1 | 4,32 | 0,902 |
| Mikhailov Academy | 15-7-6 | 1,99 | 0,944 |
2024 Draft profile
With all this context in mind, let’s talk about this excellent goalkeeper. Born on September 20, 2005, he is 18 years old. He will be one of the oldest prospects in the 2024 draft, missing the 2023 draft by a few days. He stands 6’4 and weighs 179 lbs. His contract with Russia runs out in 2025, so he’s a prospect with the potential to reach North America fairly quickly. Particularly as he doesn’t belong to a team with the same strict restrictions as SKA.
Zarubin is a very athletic goalie who takes up a lot of space in front of his net. His mitt is excellent, but he has shortcomings on the blocking side. Several goals were scored over his right shoulder, as he often lowers his blocker on shots. As for the rest, there’s everything to like about this goalie. Constantly in control of rebounds, he’s a goaltender who gets forward well on shots, absorbs the puck well with his body and covers a lot of ground with his pads. His reading of the game and his anticipation are two elite qualities in his game. He regularly picks up information in the slot, scanning the danger zones, so as not to get caught out by one timer shots. He explodes well when it’s time and is able to reposition quickly to deal with the rebound.
The MVP in net
In Russia, he literally carries his team on his shoulders. He’s had shutouts against some excellent teams in the MHL and held off Loko and SKA brilliantly on several occasions without having the support in front of him. In the playoffs, he raised his game even higher, collecting two shutouts during the play-in. He played some big games in the playoffs against Spartak, the MHL’s 5th-ranked team, but it wasn’t enough. His team lost in three games, with Zarubin’s scores close and his games busy. In the end, what I liked about this goalie was his fighting spirit and the consistency he showed throughout the season. In games at the beginning of the year, you could see the potential. However, you could also see that he was left to his own with AKM Junior. Nevertheless, he gave his team a chance to stay in the game by working like hell in holy water. With Mikhailov Academy, the progress was also there. He knows how to raise his game against the big teams and doesn’t let himself be thrown off balance by a widening gap.
He’s the goalie who’s seen the most action this season, performing very well on a mid team, and as of March 12, 2023, nobody had listed or even talked about him. This puts him in first place among MHL goalkeepers for number of games played, with 45. He ranks 36th in goals-against average, but 13th in efficiency. He remains tied with Yevgeni Volokhin for the number of shutouts in a season with 5.
Will he be selected in the 2024 draft? At the time of writing, he is not on any public list. Nor even on the Central Scouting list, which ranks only 15 goalkeepers on the European side. In my top 10 of the best goalkeepers, I can’t see him dropping out of my top 3. And I can’t rule out seeing him at the very top for the 2024 cohort.
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