Vegas Golden Knights Prospect Update March 2024

I have a history with the Vegas Golden Knights, going back to when the rumours of the expansion began and I had argued with people on Pensburgh who said they would never get enough support to have hockey in the desert. I followed the updates through 2016-17 as we got confirmation of their founding and eventually verified their name, logos, and colours. I became a fan before they even had any players or coaches and watched them sign their first prospect Reid Duke when his juniors career finished that spring. I officially jumped ship to make them my team when the Pittsburgh Penguins announced they were going to let Vegas have Marc-Andre Fleury, and my support was solidified in coming weeks when they hired one of my favourite Wilkes-Barre/Scranton captains Ryan Craig as an assistant coach (as well as former WBS staff Athletic Trainer Kyle Moore and Conditioning Coach Doug Davidson). Then I was already on the bandwagon when the Expansion Draft added several more former Pens that I was familiar with: Deryk Engelland, James Neal, and David Perron. They even signed former WBS winger Paul Thompson who became an alternate captain with their AHL affiliate Chicago Wolves (Beau Bennett was there too as a St. Louis Blues player and Brett Sterling on an AHL deal).

So I was a Golden Misfits fan with high expectations even when everybody was writing them off and I got to watch as Engelland was named an alternate captain and gave his speech after the Vegas shooting, then watched as the team defied the odds and made a run all the way to the Stanley Cup finals. I stopped paying attention to the Pens because I was frustrated with Jim Rutherford and their head coach Mike Sullivan and did not like the direction they were taking the team. From 2017-20 I followed them and wrote about them extensively, I was excited to see former Wheeling Nailers forward Gage Quinney join the team and make his NHL debut in his hometown. But then things changed… they fired Gerard Gallant and the new head coach Peter DeBoer chose to bench Engelland and make Fleury the backup. The season was cut short do to COVID and when they came back in 2020-21 they had a new AHL affiliate and very few of the players I was familiar with remained, and with so many games getting canceled or rescheduled and players being out because of COVID protocols I did not really cover hockey much that year. What really made me give up on them though was that they rewarded Fleury’s excellent season winning both the Jennings and Vezina trophies by trading him away to go all in on Robin Lehner as their #1 goalie.

I still checked on them over the years, but there were only a handful of players left that I cared about, and I never liked DeBoer, so I stopped writing about them and stopped covering their drafts and prospects developing with the Henderson Silver Knights. But I was happy for them when they won the Stanley Cup, I watched the ceremony to see Ryan Craig as well as the old Golden Misfits Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson, Reilly Smith, Brayden McNabb, Shea Theodore, and William Carrier as well as my favourite prospect from their inaugural 2017 Draft Nicolas Hague (and former Pens Phil Kessel and Teddy Blueger). But now as I look at their list of prospects there is only one player left that I even know anything about. Between the juniors, Europe, and the NCAA Vegas have 14 prospects who haven’t turned pro in North America yet: 2 goaltenders, 4 defensemen, and 8 forwards.

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Pittsburgh Penguins Prospect Update March 2024

I got busy around the holidays and didn’t update at the end of December and then just forgot about it at the end of January, so it has now been three months since we took a look at the Pittsburgh Penguins prospects playing in Europe, the juniors, and the NCAA. However, it is good timing because the NCAA regular season ended this weekend, so the college players are finishing up and we could see some reinforcements coming to WBS and Wheeling soon. The European leagues that began earlier are also finishing up and starting their playoffs already, but we are less likely to get help from overseas during the spring.

Not counting the four defected players whose rights they still hold, the Pens have one goalie, five D, and nine forwards coming up through their development system. Filip Lindberg, Joseph Masonius, Filip Hållander, and Kasper Björkqvist are all defected players whom the Pens retain their player rights while Thimo Nickl is a Pens prospect who is currently signed to an AHL deal with WBS. There is no reason to cover them though as they don’t fall into the same category as the ones below who are young prospects that have not yet turned pro.

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Goaltenders

Sergei Murashov – 2022 4th round

Murashov is a 19 year old, 6’1″, 170lbs G playing for his local Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the Kontinental’naya Khokkeynaya Liga in Russia. In the KHL he went 4-1-1 (3-1-1-1) with a 1.84 GAA and 92.5 Sv% with one shutout. He is #7 in GAA and #19 in Sv% amongst KHL goaltenders although he is barely ahead of the team’s starter and worse numbers than one of their veteran backups. He is one of only five junior goalies who played in the top league this year, two of which played far more games and posted even better stats. Lokomotiv finished 2nd in the Tarasov division, 3rd in the Western conference, and 4th in the KHL with a 44-19-5 record (34-10-5-19). They are currently in the first round of the playoffs.

He started the year playing on their junior team in the Molodezhnaya Hokkeinaya Liga, his third year as starter for Loko, and returned to finish the season with them. In his time there, he went 28-4-1 (22-6-1-4) with a 2.03 GAA and 93.0 Sv% with four of his games ending in a shutout. He was #5 in GAA and #9 in Sv% amongst MHL goalies who played more than 15 games, although his backups had even better numbers than he does. Loko finished the year 1st in the entire MHL with a 44-6-2 record (38-6-2-6). He is in the final year of his KHL contract, but he probably isn’t ready to come to North America to turn pro so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pens don’t sign him yet and let him re-sign in Russia.