The Toronto Maple Leafs have taken Juuso Ainasto with the 85th overall pick in the third round of the 2026 Entry Draft. Kinda figured they'd finish off that rapid fire of picks in the third round with a goalie, eh?

Vitals

  • Position: Goalie
  • League(s): U20 SM-sarja
  • Height: 6'4"
  • Weight: 198 lbs
  • Birthdate: Mar 17, 2008

Career

Highlights

Rankings

  • Elite Prospects - 74th
  • McKeen's Hockey - 185th
  • NHL Central Scouting - 14th among European goalies

Who Is Zach Olsen?

Here are some scouting reports:

Elite Prospects

Juuso Ainasto wasn’t even on our watchlist when the season began, let alone known by any of our scouts.
The Jokerit U18 netminder hadn’t represented Finland at any international tournaments nor played at the U20 level before. That all changed at the end of November, when we caught our first glimpse of the 6-foot-4 netminder and were completely mesmerized by just how polished he was.
Ainasto is an impressive mover. On his feet, he’s explosive and shows quick footwork. But where he really shines is in the butterfly, keeping his form while moving, taking away ample net. Ainasto uses this to challenge shooters and create a black hole for shooters on direct shots. Side-to-side, he’s able to zip across-crease with ease and speed, beating pucks on his pushes alone, and he’s also able to recover quickly from his extensions and get back into a ready stance.
His hand placement is very strong, rarely covering his body and projected very well. He tracks pucks into his hands and directs them out. He boasts strong playreading, incorporating scans to better predict where the puck and play will meet them.
Ainasto is also a born competitor, battling for each save. His battling extends to shenanigans as well, windmilling his glove before shoving the puck in the shooter’s face, and pushing players who enter his crease. While you’d expect players with that level of bravado to struggle when things go awry, Ainasto has also shown impressive composure, looking like the same goaltender in blowouts as in lower-scoring games, maintaining his form and confidence in his play and reads.
As Ainasto favours an inactive, upright stance that disengages him completely, rather than one with his knees bent and hands at the ready, he’ll need to improve his handling of screens. This is in contrast to his default stance of playing low and wide, which also causes him trouble, as he can be beaten high above the shoulders. He also tends to predict the play a bit too much, sometimes neglecting to follow puck carriers on two-on-ones, just assuming they’ll pass, and he can also neglect his rebound control when facing significant shot pressure.
Ultimately, Ainasto is a goaltender with a lot of real promise. He’s a strong athlete, an impressive competitor, and a good skater, all while boasting a good technical base and showing strong anticipation. While his tracking will need to improve more, and he’ll need to continue interpreting his reads more effectively, Ainasto shows real promise as a tandem or starting goaltender in the NHL.

McKeen's Hockey

Ainasto is one of the draft’s biggest wild cards at the goaltending position. He spent a good portion of the year playing at the U18 level in Finland, rather than U20 or above and he has never represented Finland internationally at a major tournament. Yet, this Finnish man of mystery is firmly on the draft radar because of the tools and upside he possesses. The 6-foot-4 netminder is a terrific athlete and competitor; he can flat out steal games when he is dialed in. He moves post to post and in and out of the butterfly so effortlessly for a larger netminder. However, the technical components need major fine tuning, something that was evident in his limited action at the U20 level. He can cough up huge rebounds and have trouble securing shots from the perimeter. He can overcommit or fail to seal his posts leading to weaker goals. He relies way too much on his athleticism for a larger netminder; refining his movement in the crease will be a major focus of goaltending coaches at higher levels. Yet, it’s rare to possess the kind of athletic tools that Ainasto does at his size and thus the interest in him.

HockeyProspect.com

Juuso Ainasto is a raw, yet athletically gifted and instinctual goalie, that came onto the scene a bit later into the season as the result of starting in U18-Sarju, before getting the call in late November. He posted a shutout in his first performance at the U20 level and followed that up with another high-volume winning performance that got the attention of the U20-Jokerit squad, which was our introduction to him. The standout traits in Ainesto’s game are his combativeness in the crease, his appealing frame and athleticism, and his ability to adaptively stack coverage on high-danger shots.
Mentally, there’s a ton to like about his game. He seemingly is almost never out of the play, and on plays you think he has little chance on, he’s there fighting for every inch of ice, and fighting to get back out in-front of the puck. He’s always looking to match the urgency of the opposing team. In games, where he’s getting shelled due to either him having a poor performance or his defensive coverage has let him down, he’s still wired to stay in the game and try and make the next save as if the game wasn’t out of reach. You can tell he just loves playing the position, and there’s an energy from him that bleeds out onto the ice.
He has a prototypical frame for the position, and he blends it with an impressive set of hands that has a large range of dexterity within them. He keeps his glove hand in a fully supinated position that’s difficult to maintain, but it gives him a distinct advantage when stacking vertical coverages on the glove-hand side of his body, since it’s always in a ready, vertical and open position. His dexterity extends to his head, using his mask like a soccer player to head pucks into dead areas of ice. In terms of his lower-half, it’s not quite as dextrous, but he still has a plus level of reflexes, coordination, range-of-motion, and extensions within his legs. He can make sprawling saves while fully extended, and he can contort and twist himself off his centerline at unique angles when attempting to recover. He’s not one of the top athletes in this class, but he’s a solid one with a combination of fast-twitch and nimbleness.
There are drawbacks to Juuso’s game as well. He’s not always technical, far from it at times. He has a tendency to misinterpret the correct save selection, opting instead for a save-type that leaves him in a recovery push position, which in turn leaves his five-hole vulnerable on in-tight shots. He can over-use his one-up, one-down position, and actually get caught implementing it in the middle of his net without using recovery push-offs, leaving him stuck without a weight transfer. His butterfly execution can be inconsistent. Sometimes, he folds it inwards making it very narrow, other-times it’s loose. His skating mechanics are also inconsistent as the result of losing his edges often. He can mismanage his depth, and he can be prone to tracking errors though traffic. His high-glove was also exposed in certain games, throughout the season, and it will need to improve in order for his game to translate.
What we think will decide his future is if he can find the right blend of his advanced mental traits more often than he currently does, and increase his overall consistency as a result. He has a surprisingly good read of the game in some key areas. He can identify no-look backdoor plays rapidly, anticipate advanced odd-man scenarios, interpret point blank redirects, and get out in-front of weakside lateral options. He is aware of what the opposing team wants to do against him in most instances. But, what we have found is that he can be overreactive and take away his own advantages from himself as well. His future will depend on balancing his mental traits more evenly, and if he does then he has the chance to be a high-end backup for a team.
NHL DraftMaple Leafs Prospects