After months of buildup, the 2026 NHL Draft has come and gone. For Doug Armstrong, it was his final draft as general manager of the St. Louis Blues before Alex Steen takes over later this week. The Blues started the day with 13 draft selections in total, four of them first-rounders, and traded away four picks over the course of the weekend; they added nine prospects to the organization when all was said and done, plus two roster players in forward Mason McTavish and defenseman Brandon Carlo.
One of those nine picks was Russian goaltender Vladimir Proskurin, taken 123rd overall in the fourth round. That's the second consecutive year that the Blues have added a netminder to their pipeline, which now includes Will Cranley, Gerogii Romanov, Marcus Gidlof, and Love Harenstam--and potentially Vadim Zherenko, if he re-signs this summer. On the big club, you've got Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer, the latter of whom has established himself as the clear starter heading into the 2026-27 season.
That's a lot of depth at one position! Continuing to add at goaltender, however, is a shrewd maneuver by the Blues. Goalie is the most volatile position in professional hockey; a player might win the Vezina and Hart one year, then have the first sub-.900 SV% season of his career the next. Projecting goalies as draft eligibles is a fool's errand, and sometimes teams stumble upon undrafted gems like Sergei Bobrovsky that are on track to join the Hockey Hall of Fame (never mind that the Philadelphia Flyers utterly fumbled that situation).
Proskurin, for his part, was one of the more well-regarded goaltending prospects heading into the draft. He's only played in Russia's third-tier MHL, but did put up a .921 SV% and 2.97 GAA. It could be a number of years before he comes to North America, and that's just fine--Russia seems pretty good at developing goalies these days. Hopefully, he can one day join the Blues in the capacity that Hofer did under Binnington: as a backup, who eventually takes command of the crease and evolves into an NHL-caliber starting netminder. As they say, "always be drafting goalies."
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