Welcome to Broad Street Hockey’s Summer 2024 Top Under 25! The series is back and with the Philadelphia Flyers focusing so much on the future, it’s more important than ever. Join us as we rank the 25 best players under the age of 25 for the next few weeks. No. 17: Yegor Zavragin For roughly several minutes after the Flyers drafted a young Russian goaltender by the name of Yegor Zavragin in the third round of the 2023 NHL Draft, a smattering of who? was heard across the fan base. While goaltenders are rarely talked about as top prospects, and only the select few actually get featured in that way, Zavragin was an unknown even amongst netminder prospect appreciators. A player that had just spent two years in the MHL (the Russian junior league) in a town that appears to be in the absolute middle of nowhere with a population under 100,000, was now selected in the first half of the NHL Draft by the Philadelphia Flyers. But quickly, within just a couple of months, those question marks surrounding their draft decision turned into significant praises for potentially finding a diamond in the rough and getting a prime scoop of that much-desired top-tier Russian goaltending talent. 2023-24 Primary League/Team: Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk (VHL)2023-24 Statistics: .943 SV%, 1.60 GAA in 17 GPAge as of 9/15/2024: 19 (8/23/2005)Acquired Via: 2023 NHL Draft - Round 3, Pick 87 How did Zavragin\'s 2023-24 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year? Last season, the first season since being drafted by the Flyers, saw Zavragin make his first professional hockey start in the VHL (the Russian second division) and it really stuck. He absolutely dominated in the MHL, and did exactly the same in the VHL at 19 years old. Zavragin led the entire VHL in save percentage with .943 SV%, and in the 15 years that this league has existed, his season was at the very top among Under-20 goaltenders that have played at least 15 games. Those numbers kind of make your eyes bulge, especially when you look at the very best Russian goaltenders in the world and what they were doing at his age. Igor Shesterkin, for example, appeared in just eight VHL games in his post-Draft 2014-15 season (that was the most in any league) and earned a .943 SV%, the exact same as Zavragin. And even the following year, Shesterkin didn\'t make his KHL team full-time, he spent another season in the minors and posted an even-better .954 SV%. If Zavragin can have a similar trajectory (or even better), then we are looking at something potentially great. His stock might just be trending up, but like any goaltender, it\'s really on a season-by-season basis. What are we expecting from Zavragin this season? What should we be looking for from him? Like we literally just mentioned, goaltenders are weird. When it comes to skater prospects, and especially the top ones, you can kind of expect them to take year-by-year steps within their development. Maybe they would score a whole lot of more points in juniors or college, and then they would turn pro, and then we would see them banging on the door to the NHL. For goaltenders, and especially those over in Europe, it really feels like the developmental line is less straight forward. Zavragin will be in the KHL next season, though. His rights were traded to a team we are all familiar with -- SKA St. Petersburg -- as he is emerging as one of the best young goaltenders overseas. But, just like our pal Matvei, he has been loaned to HK Sochi to get way more playing time than he ever would with SKA. The big thing about this loan, as especially if he is the team\'s starter, is recognizing that Sochi is not a very good hockey team. Like Michkov, if he was to be on any other KHL team, it feels like his raw numbers would look much better. Last season, Sochi allowed a league-high, 254 goals, the next highest allowed 30 goals fewer than Zavragin\'s new club. So unless this 19-year-old netminder is the next Dominik Hasek, we might expect his numbers to look not all that great when compared to goaltenders on other, not-terrible teams. How does Zavragin fit in the Flyers’ rebuild? Is it likely he’s going to be a part of the next good Flyers team? Zavragin finds himself nestled in comfortably in the goaltending pipeline that the Flyers\' front office has created for themselves. Samuel Ersson and Ivan Fedotov are a young(ish) NHL tandem with both players having the potential to take over the starting position. Alexei Kolosov is (hopefully) coming to North America full-time and will be the AHL starter to make the giant leap across the Atlantic hockey-wise. And then Zavragin is in the same position as the also recently drafted Carson Bjarnason as long-term projects to see who pans out. Realistically, there is most likely going to be several years before we can dream about Zavragin in the NHL. He will spend at least a couple of years in the KHL and then the team and player will go from there, maybe he comes over when he\'s Kolosov\'s age in three years -- so this is still a very much Future Thing. But, if he pans out, he certainly can be the goaltender that grows with the other prospects that the Flyers have in the pipeline or young players on the team. Every team needs a good goalie, so maybe Zavragin is that bona fide starter on a contending club. What do we think Zavragin\'s ultimate NHL upside is, and how likely is it that he gets to something approaching that? We just compared him to Igor Shesterkin earlier, so I would say his actual ceiling is extremely high. Maybe not The Best Goaltender In The World level, but with the numbers he is putting up in the opportunities he has been given so far in his young career, there is certainly potential for him to be a regular NHL All-Star netminder. That\'s the top of his projection, so naturally, it\'s the least likely but that doesn\'t mean it is impossible. This upcoming season is a massive one for Zavragin and the answer to almost every question here will become so much more clear as he makes his KHL debut and gets to play at his top domestic level. Previously in Philadelphia Flyers Summer 2024 Top 25 Under 25: Intro / Honorable Mentions No. T-24: Spencer Gill No. T-24: Jack Berglund No. 23: Elliot Desnoyers No. 22: Carson Bjarnason No. T-20: Alex Bump No. T-20: Alex Ciernik No. 19: Adam Ginning No. 18: Devin Kaplan