This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Yaroslav Askarov
San Jose Sharks Goaltender
The most valuable goaltending prospect in hockey, and thirteen NHL games at an .8964.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | NSH | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 4.15 | 0 | 35 | .886 |
| 2023-24 | NSH | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1.47 | 0 | 35 | .943 |
| 2024-25 | SJS | 13 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 37 | 3.10 | 0 | 357 | .896 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 16 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 43 | 3.01 | 0 | 427 | .899 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
4-6-2 in 13 games with an .8964 and a 3.10 average, facing 357 shots and recording no shutouts.
Thirteen games on a club that conceded 315 goals and finished 32nd in the league in chance share. An .8964 in that setting is not a bad number and it is not evidence of anything either.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 180 and thin for the position, which is the one physical question about him. He plays an athletic, reactive style rather than a blocking one — he meets the shooter high in the crease and relies on quickness.
The glove is exceptional and it is the first thing anybody says about him. The lateral movement is very quick. The rebound control is the unfinished part, which is the usual complaint about a goaltender who relies on reflexes, and behind a club conceding at the 30th-ranked rate it was punished constantly. He handles the puck well.
The Mental Game
He was the best goaltending prospect in the world at 18 and has spent five years being told so, and he forced a trade out of Nashville at 22 by declining to be third in line.
Thirteen NHL games behind the worst defensive club in the league is a difficult introduction and he did not visibly come apart in it. The temperament is the thing nobody knows yet.
The Intangibles
Eleventh overall in 2020, the highest a goaltender had been taken in over a decade, and acquired from Nashville in the summer of 2024 for a young defenceman and a second-round pick.
16 NHL games. He is 23 and San Jose has cleared the crease in front of him: Alexandar Georgiev, Mackenzie Blackwood and Vitek Vanecek all played here last season and none of them is on the roster.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“he meets the shooter high in the crease and relies on quickness.”
“The lateral movement is very quick.”
“**The rebound control is the unfinished part**, which is the usual complaint about a goaltender who relies on reflexes, and behind a club conceding at the 30th-ranked rate it was punished constantly.”
“He handles the puck well.”