The Calgary Flames have had rough luck with drafting goaltenders early in the NHL Draft throughout their history.

So their solution during the tenure of director of goaltending Jordan Sigalet has been to take goaltenders every couple of years, and usually taking them in the later rounds. Most often in recent years, the Flames have opted to select Russian goaltenders, who have the benefit of the club maintaining their NHL rights indefinitely while the players can develop in Russia.

Kirill Zarubin is the fourth Russian-born goaltender the Flames have selected since 2020, and he may be the most promising of the bunch. He lands at 19th on our countdown of the Flames’ top 20 prospects.

Born and raised in Penza, in southeast Russia, Zarubin played his youth and minor hockey in his hometown and came up through the Dizel Penza system.

Zarubin spent the 2021-22 season, his 16-year-old year, with Dizelist Penza in Russia’s second-tier junior league, the NMHL. He was part of a three-way goaltending split and led his team in save percentage (and was tied for the lead in wins).

He moved onto Russia’s top junior league, the MHL, for the 2022-23 season, his 17-year-old year. He joined the Mikhailov Academy (otherwise known as AKM Tula), where he played for their junior team – the academy has two teams that play in the MHL, a junior team and a senior team. He was second-stringer in a goaltending tandem, but led his team in wins. The Academy’s junior team won nine of 54 games, with Zarubin in net for five wins. (The junior team was quite bad.)

The 2023-24 season, Zarubin’s draft eligible year, was in the MHL, but he split his season between the academy’s two teams. He began the season with the junior team, which we established is not as good as their senior team. Zarubin only played for them in the first month or so of the season, winning four times, before moving onto Mikhailov Academy’s senior team full-time by mid-November. He ended up leading the senior team in games, wins, save percentage and goals against average.

While Zarubin didn’t crack Central Scouting’s final rankings for international goaltenders, Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis had him 118th in his final rankings. The Flames drafted him in the third round, 84th overall, in June’s entry draft.

Here’s what Ellis had to say about Zarubin:

So here’s the fun thing about Zarubin: until there’s a transfer agreement hammered out between the NHL and the Russian ice hockey federation, the Flames hold his rights indefinitely. So there’s absolutely zero time pressure on getting him signed and whisked over to North America: they have time to let him cook and develop in Russia.

Zarubin had a superb last two-thirds of his season in 2023-24 and it got him on the radar of a lot of NHL clubs as a potential draft selection. The big challenge for him will be building on it with a strong full season with Mikhailov Academy’s senior team. He’s the youngest of the three goalies on their roster, but he seems to be the one most positioned for success. He could end up making his pro debut this season, too, as he spent time with AKM Tula’s minor league team (which plays a level below the KHL) during their training camp.

Zarubin is a promising goaltender with a long developmental runway. He hasn’t accomplished a ton in high-end hockey quite yet, but his performances thus far suggest quite a bit of potential.