Flames prospect Arsenii Sergeev named USHL’s goaltender of the year

A Calgary Flames prospect has captured a major league award. Goaltending prospect Arsenii Sergeev has been named the United States Hockey League’s goaltender of the year. He joins Jacob Markstrom (Vezina Trophy finalist in NHL) and Dustin Wolf (the AHL’s top goaltender) as award-nominated or winning Flames netminders for the 2021-22 season.

Sergeev, 19, was a seventh-round pick of the Flames in the 2021 NHL Draft.

After coming over from Russia following the 2018-19 season, he spent 2019-20 adapting to living away from home, learning the North American style, and bouncing around a bunch – he played for the NAHL New Jersey Junior Titans, the USHL Sioux Falls Stampede and the NCDC New Jersey Rockets. In 2020-21, he cemented himself with the NAHL’s Shreveport Mudbugs and his strong play was enough to catch the eye of the Flames’ goaltending department, who convinced director of scouting Tod Button to take a flier on him in the seventh round.

Returning to the USHL, this time with the Tri-City Storm, Sergeev was excellent. He led the league in – deep breath everyone – wins, shutouts, goals against average and save percentage. The only real knock on the kid was that he got tossed out of too many games and/or suspended, and part of that is owed to his competitive nature and part of that is because of the USHL’s officiating standards. Either way, he’ll need to rein that in a bit in college, but his season has given him a superb foundation to build from.

Sergeev is headed to the NCAA in the fall, where he’ll tend goal for the University of Connecticut. (Go Huskies!)

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