2026 NHL Draft: Top Five Goalies Include Trejbal, Boettiger And Knowling
Prospect expert Tony Ferrari breaks down his top five goalies for the 2026 NHL draft and other netminders to watch.
Video Transcript
The Carolina Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup, and that means the focus of the hockey world is beginning to shift to the off-season, and the first major event of the off-season is always the NHL draft.
This year at the NHL draft, there's gonna be a number of really high impact players that are selected, and here at the Hockey News, we're going over the top five players at every position, starting with the goalies.
Guys in the crease are always one of the most important players on the ice.
They're oftentimes the most undervalued player when you have a really good one, and when you don't have a good goalie, you're constantly in search of one.
It's a really interesting position because it's the one position on the ice in the game of hockey that can truly steal you a game on their own.
So who are the top five goalies in this year's draft?
It's not an incredibly high-end draft year for goalies.
There's no Jesper Wallstedt or Yaroslav Osgov or Spencer Knight, but there are some really solid goalies that have some really interesting tools and projectable skills.
Tobias Trejbal is the most impactful goalie in this year's draft.
He's on-- the number one goalie on most boards, and he's had a good season.
He's a guy that has just about every tool you want.
He just doesn't necessarily have the elite tool that you, you look for in that elite level goaltending prospect.
He does everything you wanna see, and he could be a really interesting goalie moving forward and a really solid starter in the NHL one day.
Another guy, like Dmitry Borushev, is a really interesting prospect.
He has so many of the things that you want from an NHL goalie, and it's gonna be interesting to see where he goes because the Russian pipeline has been quite strong.
And as you'll see in some of the honorable mentions, there's a number of Russian goalies that could be drafted fairly high this year.
Carter Casey's one of the most athletic goalies in the class.
He really is this, the ball of clay that you want to take and develop into what you want as a, as a netminder.
He has all of the physical tools, all of the, the athletic traits that you want from a netminder, and he could be the steal of the draft depending on where he goes, especially if you get him in the third or fourth round.
Check out thehockeynews.com as we go over the top five goalies in this year's draft class, as well as a few honorable mentions because the goalie position is certainly one of the most volatile in any draft selection, but this year specifically.
