As it turns out, if you play too well during your first taste of the KHL while on loan at a bottom-half team in the league, you get to return to the big club.
Philadelphia Flyers goaltender prospect Yegor Zavragin has been rewarded for his near-perfect performances through the start of the 2024-25 KHL season while on loan at HC Sochi, and has been recalled from that loan by SKA St. Petersburg.
As the team mentions in the brief release, Zavragin was just playing so well. At just 19 years of age — the time when a prospect is just starting to figure it out and might not even be playing professional hockey yet — Zavragin has been one of the best goaltenders in, arguably, the second-best hockey league in the world. Through six appearances, the Flyers 2023 third-round pick has an astronomical .941 save percentage, a 2.21 goals against average, and has earned one shutout.
And context is needed. HC Sochi is not some all-star team with a rugged defense that can suppress shots at an elite level — they are possibly the worst defensive team in the league. Zavragin has been bailing them out and miraculously earned a 3-3 record while in between the pipes. And his worst performance was coming in relief during an eventual 7-4 blowout loss, when he managed to save just 12 of the 14 shots he faced in 32 minutes against his home club, SKA St. Petersburg.
Now, we are unsure of what Zavragin’s role will be with SKA. The KHL is notorious for not giving any young player a true opportunity to shine — as we see with Ivan Demidov getting fourth-line minutes, and Michkov needing to go somewhere else — so maybe the 19-year-old netminder will be just their backup. Still, it will be incredibly interesting to see how Zavragin performs with one of the better teams in the league in front of him.
A quick look at just how the current tandem for SKA has performed and it gives a much clearer picture. Artemi Pleshkov, the team’s starter, has earned a .923 save percentage and 2.63 goals against average in 12 appearances — those are very good numbers on a very good team. But meanwhile, the team’s backup, 28-year-old Nikita Serebraykov has been not good. An .874 save percentage and 3.70 goals against average in five appearances is not someone a team with championship aspirations can hang their hat on. Zavragin should immediately be the team’s backup and maybe someone who SKA is willing to give more than just one full game to (Serebraykov has been strictly used to come in relief or has been so bad, he’s been pulled early).
No matter what type of role Zavragin has, it’s still an improvement over being peppered with shots in Sochi for the entire season. He gets a true look and we if everything goes well, he should be SKA’s full-time starter before he comes overseas to Philadelphia.
