2026 T25U25: Patriks Plumins is #22

Sign Up to PPP Today

You have to be a member to comment at PPP. Membership is free and requires only an email address.

Become a Member

Goalies, amirite?

For the first time in this year's T25U25, we have to talk about a goalie. Not just a goalie, but one so young we just drafted him where he played in a league none of us probably have the slightest idea how to contextualize compared to other goalie prospects.

Naturally, I signed up to write about Plumins.

Patriks Plumins	Vitals
Age as of July 1	18.48
Position	G
Height	6'3"
Weight (lbs)	216
Shoots	L
Draft Year	2026
Draft Number	114

The Player

Plumins as a goalie prospect has some things going for him. He has some good size (6'3") even if he isn't a giant like Hildeby was, and he got good reviews from various scouts as quoted in his draft article here:

The other thing Plumins has going for him is quite good numbers where and when he played. In the regular season, he played as the primary backup or 1B goalie on a Latvian pro team, where he had a .927 sv% and 3 shutouts in 16 games. He was also the U18 Latvian team's top goalie – he had a .947 sv% in an excellent World U18 Championship tournament where he caught my attention, and a .902 sv% in seven other miscellaneous games – and he dressed for their U20 junior team at times as a backup.

The reason why I care about Plumins playing in a pro league, even if you don't consider Latvian's pro league to be noteworthy, is because of what I wrote five years ago when looking for common traits among top NHL goalies.

Specifically, one of the several conclusions or theories I took from that research I did was: If you want more certainty, draft goalies who played in European pro leagues. Here's what I specifically wrote:

2) European goalies are likely very underrated. They account for 67 fewer drafted and undrafted free agent goalies as the major junior leagues in Canada and the USA, but they turned into the exact same number of successes AND elite goalies. Their success rate is simply better. What this is telling me is that there’s roughly an equal amount of good goalies to be had in Europe as there is in North America.

3) It’s perhaps a really, really good idea to give any goalie who plays his draft season in a pro-level league in Europe a loooong look. Even if his numbers aren’t great, even if it’s in a second or third division pro league, and even if they only play in a few games. The simple fact that they’re playing against older players and tougher competition than junior is a strong testament to their ability. Such goalies have the highest rate of goalies who make the NHL, become a success, and become an elite NHL goalie (Jonas Hiller, Kari Lehtonen, Pekka Rinne, Tuukka Rask, Sergei Bobrovski, Frederik Andersen). That’s why goalies like Yarsoslav Askarov last year and Jesper Wallstedt this year are so highly regarded.

Does this mean that Plumins is the next Chosen One who will be Toronto's Vasilevskiy for the next decade or more? As nice as it would be, I'm just going to point out that "fail%" number in the European Pro row. Even if that category of league also the highest percentage of goalies making the NHL, having a 'successful' NHL career, and turning into an elite NHL goalie... they're still much more likely to not have an impactful NHL career even as a backup.

I'm just saying that if you're going to spend a draft pick on a goalie, Toronto seems to have made as smart a roll of the dice when choosing Plumins as they could have made when it comes to drafting goalies.

Now, the fun part is that Plumins may play this coming season in the QMJHL as an import pick by Chicoutimi. There hasn't been any official announcement that he's committed to playing there, so he could wind up returning to Latvia again and try to take a starting job.

The Votes

Here's how we all voted:

Voter	Vote
Cathy	NA
Species	20
Hound Line	12
Shinson93	NA
Cameron	22
Sclodiggity	19
Brian S	23
Svalbard38	21
Zone Entry	19
Hardev	NA
Adam	24
Weighted Average	21.64
Highest Vote	12
Lowest Vote	24

Only two people didn't rank him at all – the curmudgeonly Cathy and Hardev. Hound Line really believed in him, ranking him 12th. Everyone else had him in about the same area between 19th and 24th.

I personally had Plumins 23rd, and it's pretty much at that point I was running out of players that interested me even if I didn't have even the faintest hope of them reaching the NHL some day. The only reason why I didn't rank Ainasto as well, and why I chose to rank Plumins over him specifically, is because Plumins has both hype and stats to back it up. Where Ainasto had kinda meh numbers in Finland's U20 junior league, but good numbers in their U18 junior league (a very weak league for competitiveness), Plumins had much better numbers playing in Latvia's pro league and in international tournaments.

The Opinions

Here's what the other voters had to say:

Hound Line: I watched a handful of edited down games of Plumins and Ainasto on youtube, including the gem Plumins played against the US at the U18s. These were my notes: Strong technical play. Stays square and actively tracks the puck. Seals the post well. Works to keep good positioning and cover the puck in a scramble. Quick feet on kick saves and going post to post, but skating can look a little choppy when upright. Rebound control is usually good but can get lazy when the game is out of reach. Extremely active and effective settling the puck for his D, clearing it from net front or breaking up cross crease passes. He’s big, athletic, polished and battles; I love the way he plays.

Shinson93: While he was outstanding at the U18’s, it doesn’t seem like he’s played that much in his career, so far. That was the primary factor in leaving him off my rankings.

Svalbard38: Plumins led his league in SV% and GAA last season, that doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the team’s performance does play a role in that, as does the strength of the opponents he’s facing as a backup/1B, but it’s encouraging that he’s able to put up those numbers against men at his age. I’ve seen his highlight packs and he looked good, but that’s the nature of the highlight pack. Outside of Akhtyamov, Plumins is the most interesting goalie in the pool to me.

Sclodiggity: Goalies definitely get a bump for me due to the scarcity at the position. Goalies are hard to find, valuable, and take developmental strides in patterns that I can’t predict. I cross my fingers, smile at positive news, and wait for them to make the AHL where their performance has some context for me.

Hardev: I find it very hard to rank young goalies because there is zero chance I know enough about them to pick one or two or three or in any order. So for me: not ranked… yet.

Cathy: I see the ranking of goalies higher than similar skaters of whom everyone has similar understanding every year, and I don't understand it. Fool's gold is not more valuable than ordinary iron because gold is rare. That said, some goalies crept into my rankings at the bottom – in the "they will sit in this range and then graduate to the unranked list at 23" area of the list – mostly because the prospect pool is heavily tilted toward very unlikely skater prospects.

So that's what I and the other voters thought when ranking him (or not). Let us know what you think of him, and where you would have ranked him (or not)!

PPP Runs on Your Support

If you enjoy the T25U25 every year, and want to see it continue, please consider becomming a paid subscriber. We want to keep all our content open to all users, but to become a sustainable site, we need more support from paid members.

Subscribe Now

More Top 25 Under 25