Preds rookie, Yaroslav Askarov a hot commodity in the 2023-24 Series One Young Guns class
Hockey card collectors got a nice surprise when Upper Deck announced an early release for its flagship Series One set. Typically, the hobby has to wait until mid-November to dive into one of the hobbies most anticipated sets of the year. However, the product is ready for distribution and will be available to the public on October 18th.
Series One is always a fun product to rip into as it contains the highly coveted Young Guns rookie cards of the league's top freshmen. So when the checklist dropped last week I was excited to check it out and see which top rookies I should be hunting.
In this five-part series, I will be ranking the top five chase cards in the set.
The fifth player in this series I am going to highlight is card #204 Yaroslav Askarov.
I’m not sure what they’re feeding goaltenders in Russia, but the country has become a goalie factory with the likes of Andrei Vasilevskiy, Ilya Sorokin, and Igor Shesterkin all considered among the world's best netminders.
Will Askarov be able to follow them in their footsteps and reach that level of play?
The 6-foot-4 Russian goaltender was selected 11th overall in the 2020 draft after being billed as a potential top-five draft selection by some pundits.
Askarov first made a name for himself internationally at the U17 World Hockey Championships where he went 5-0 with a 1.40 goals-against-average and a .948 save percentage for Russia. He followed that up with another good performance at the Hlinka Gretzky tournament ahead of his 2019-20 draft year where he posted a 1.25 GAA and .960 sv%.
After four years in the KHL system where he split time with SKA St Petersberg and its junior affiliates, Askarov decided to come over to North America last season to play in the American Hockey League. The former top goalie prospect saw mixed results in his first season overseas where he posted a 26-16-5 record with a 2.69 GAA and a .911 SV%. He also started in 12 playoff games for the Milwaukee Admirals where he had a .500 record with a .903 SV%.
His lone NHL start last season was a struggle as well where he allowed four goals on 35 shots to Montreal.
The sub-par numbers in his first season in North America don’t seem to be deterring hockey card collectors. The belief in this young netminder must still remain high as eBay pre-sales of his Young Guns rookie card are listed as high as $70 Canadian.
He will begin the year once again in the AHL as Jusse Saros has things covered for the big club. So perhaps he can build off his freshman season in North America and start looking more like the goaltender scouts and goalie fans fell in love with back in 2020.