Prospect Info: Round 3, Pick 80: Kirill Ustimenko, G, St. Petersburg (MHL) aka the Zac Rinaldo Pick

[Curufinwe]

It's funny you say arrive in LHV, since he barely played there all season. He was in Reading with Ustimenko for most of it, and Ustimenko was great and Sandstrom sucked even though Sandstrom is two years older.

He's the first Flyers goalie prospect to have a bad season in the AHL/ECHL in a very long time.

Jeremy Duchesne - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps

 

[Rebels57]

It's funny you say arrive in LHV, since he barely played there all season. He was in Reading with Ustimenko for most of it, and Ustimenko was great and Sandstrom sucked even though Sandstrom is two years older.

He's the first Flyers goalie prospect to have a bad season in the AHL/ECHL in a very long time.

Jeremy Duchesne - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps

I should have said "arrived in our farm system."

Their handling of Felix since he has come over to North America has been odd. He came from the SHL, which is a better league than the AHL. He should have been backing up Lyon from the get-go with Ustimenko starting in Reading, but Chuck just couldn't help himself and signed an absolute scrub in Berube so they had another veteran in LHV.

Because of this he gets only 1 AHL start and is promptly sent to the ECHL, a league far inferior to the SHL, and possibly suffered a crisis of confidence and plays poorly.

Lyon - Sandstrom in the AHL, Ustimenko-Berube in the ECHL would have made a lot more sense to me. I understand that going to the ECHL isn't always a bad thing for a goalie, but it sure appears as though it was for Sandstrom in his first season in NA.

 

[Curufinwe]

Berube had a solid AHL season for the Phantoms while Sandstrom couldn't stop a beachball in the ECHL, but Sandstrom deserved to be in the AHL? Not sure how that works.

A prospect can have a bad season without it automatically being the fault of the "system".

 

[Appleyard]

Sandstroms first ~5 games in the ECHL he was excellent. Even with a ~.890 sv%. It was just 1v0, 2v1, 3v1 all the time. He had games where he allowed 5 and 6 goals and was one of the best players.

Their D was comedy to start the year. Ustimenko had a similar sv% to begin. But then, yeh, Sandstrom did start to look off.

I guess it hurt his confidence... plus he probably has not played that unstructured a game of hockey since he was ~18 years old tbh. I have not spoken to him directly about it, but it probably played into it.

It was a big step down from where he had played (and been average/better) for the previous four seasons.

The year before he had put up above average sv% in the SHL... and has been very good in two Allsvenskan games so far.

 

[FLYguy3911]

I had good money on a defending post of the Berube signing.

 

[deadhead]

Well, given the experience of the previous season, and that neither Sandstrom or Ustimenko were NHL ready, can't blame them for stashing mediocre goalies in case of emergency.

 

[DancingPanther]

I had good money on a defending post of the Berube signing.

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