Aleksei Medvedev’s stock didn’t take the hit some expected after a rough sophomore season in the OHL. That’s the big takeaway from CanucksArmy’s latest summer prospect rankings, which place the London Knights goaltender fourth among Vancouver’s top 20 prospects.
Medvedev, 18, comes in at 6’3″ and 180 lbs, catches left, and was drafted in the second round, 47th overall, in 2025. He was ranked second at mid-season, and even after an .891 save percentage in London this past year, he still lands firmly in the top five.
The reasoning is simple: the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story with a young goalie. The piece points to how easy it is to overreact to junior seasons, especially for netminders, and uses Ty Young as a recent example of why process matters more than a bad stat line. Young’s own path from a disappointing WHL season to strong pro numbers in 2024-25 is held up as the kind of bounce-back Medvedev could follow.
Medvedev said at Canucks development camp earlier this month that the season in London forced him to adjust his perspective.
“I feel like, obviously, I had a little bit of an off year. I was off to a really good start, but then I lost my game a little bit,” Medvedev said about his season in London.
“But I thought it just gave me a really good perspective on the game of hockey. When you’re in that discomfort of not playing your best, you keep looking for stuff to improve your game.
So I was able to find so many great things that helped me and explore them a lot more in this offseason.”
“I feel like this year just made me realize how important that is, and I never really faced that much adversity. Especially as a second [round] pick, you’re coming into a year with a lot of expectations, and then you’re not quite playing up to them.
Just realizing how important that is and learning from it, just using it to your benefit, that’s my biggest mindset. I feel like that might have been one of the best things that’s happened to me.
Especially that early on in my career, it’s really valuable experience.”
Despite the dip in results, the traits that made Medvedev stand out in his draft year are still there. His size, athleticism, compete level, technical ability, and puck-tracking all remain major positives.
He uses his frame and flexibility to recover on second chances, make difficult stops, and erase chances that beat most goalies. His lateral movement is explosive, and he still does a strong job sealing the lower part of the net.
That combination of tools and intangibles is why the ranking remains high. The piece argues that technique and details can be cleaned up more easily when a goalie already has Medvedev’s physical gifts. And with his 19th birthday not coming until September, there is still plenty of time for those adjustments to take hold.
The outlook is still strong. Medvedev’s ceiling is listed as an NHL starter, with the possibility of becoming an elite one. His floor is higher than the usual goaltending fallback, too, with the projection calling him at minimum an AHL netminder and saying it would be shocking if he never plays NHL games at all, even if only as a backup.
As for the timeline, he’s already signed to an entry-level contract and could spend the next two seasons in the OHL. If he puts together a strong enough 2026-27 season, Vancouver could decide the next step is turning pro. The article pegs his NHL arrival around 2030-31, when he’d be 23.
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