The Toronto Maple Leafs have a number of solid goaltending prospects in the pipeline, and one of them in particular is red hot to begin his 2024-25 season.

Recently, the Maple Leafs lost a promising young goaltending prospect to the Philadelphia Flyers organization when Keith Petruzzelli signed a contract with the Flyers’ AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

Thankfully, when one door closes, another one opens, and the Leafs were lucky enough to select 6-foot-4 Russian goaltending prospect Timofei Obvintsev in the 5th round of this year’s NHL Entry Draft. Little was known about the 19-year-old netminder prior to the draft, but so far during the MHL pre-season, Obvintsev has really established himself as an exciting prospect to watch.

The Leafs have really put an emphasis in recent years on trying to find as many quality young goalies for their prospect pool as they can, which is very refreshing after a particularly tough run of goaltending luck over the better part of the last two decades.

Obvintsev played 16 games for CSKA Red Army Jr. last season, racking up a 7-7-0 record, which doesn’t exactly jump off the page. His 2.96 GAA is also not something that appears overly impressive, but when looking at his .921 SV%, it becomes very clear that he was a very busy netminder and kept a lot of pucks out of the net, despite a high volume of work.

At 19, Obvintsev still has a long way to go in his development before he’ll ever be a consideration for the Maple Leafs or even the Toronto Marlies, but with the start he’s had to the year, he may put his name on the map before long.