Can Michael Hrabal become the best goaltender from the 2023 NHL Draft?

Michael Hrabal (Steven Ellis/Daily Faceoff)

BASEL, Switzerland – Often, a goaltender’s most prominent critic is the goaltender himself.

Michael Hrabal had little to be happy about despite giving Czechia a fighting chance against the most dominant scoring force at the U-18 World Hockey Championship in Switzerland. His tournament was over. He couldn’t get over a pair of goals he allowed in the third. Despite giving USA its closest challenge of the event, it didn’t matter.

It was a crushing blow for one of the top goaltending prospects for the 2023 NHL Draft. He had a 1-4-0 record in five games with Czechia, but his .920 save percentage made him one of the best in the tournament. There’s only so much you can do when your team doesn’t score, and with just six goals combined against Slovakia, Sweden, Canada and USA, there wasn’t much more Hrabal could do.

Czechia was in the tougher Group A, which meant entering the playoff round as the lowest seed. That meant a meeting with the United States, perhaps the only team the Czechs were severely outmatched against. The Americans controlled the pace, making it look like a 60-minute power play. It was the most dominant the United States looked all tournament long. So unless Hrabal was going to score goals himself, it didn’t matter how many saves he made. He turned away 48 shots in his best game of the tournament, but a pair of weak goals in the final minutes put the game far out of reach. Those are the ones Hrabal would love to get back.

Had the Czechs managed to pull off the win somehow, maybe we’d be talking about Hrabal clinching the top goaltender honors.

But that’s in the past. Next up: the NHL Draft. There’s no clear top goaltender this year. But NHL Central Scouting has Hrabal as the No. 2 North American-based goaltender behind Carson Bjarnason in the final rankings published earlier in April. Many in the scouting community believe Hrabal has NHL starter potential.

You have to dig deep beyond his season record to realize just how good Hrabal can be. Between his USHL season with Omaha, the U-18s and Hlinka Gretzky, we’re looking at an 11-19-4 record. Nothing to get excited about, for sure. But Hrabal held his own on an Omaha team that came 15th out of 16 teams during the regular season. He also put in some valiant performances with Czechia internationally, a group that struggled to score all year long.

What scouts like is his foundation. Hrabal stands tall at 6-foot-6, but moves quick, has an active glove hand and battles until the bitter end. Hrabal models his game after Jake Oettinger, another goaltender with good size and flexibility in the crease. There are some decent comparisons between the two, mainly how they don’t let their bigger frames slow them down.

“He’s a tall, smart goalie, athletic and quick,” Hrabal said. “And he wins a lot.”

Scouting goaltenders is like managing a minefield with a blindfold on. Scouts will tell you it’s a crapshoot. So you’re looking for projectables, like size and their mental game. He checks the boxes, for the most part. Hrabal rarely is why his team loses, and while he was down on himself in Basel, it’s understandable after a tournament-ending loss.

“He’s different than all the players I have here,” coach Jakub Petr said after the loss to the Americans. “He’s smarter than (all our coaching staff).”

Hrabal faced a boatload of shots, which might not be great for a goalie’s stat line, but can be great for development. He’s set to return to Omaha for the 2023-24 USHL season before joining the University of Massachusetts. Patience is critical with goaltenders.

“Everything feels so calculated in his play,” a scout said. “He doesn’t give you much room to begin with, and when you try and get creative, he takes that space away. He tracks the puck and reads cross-crease passes as well as anyone in the draft class.”

Depending on who you talk to, many think Hrabal could be taken late in the first round for a team looking to hit a home run in net. There’s so much risk taking a puckstopper that early, but Hrabal is one of the few that look like a future starter. He shines against quality competition, but he has spent most of his time as a teenager playing behind lousy defensemen. Given his ability to win games, imagine if he had more competent help.

Hrabal tends to be a bit “leaky,” allowing goals to squeak through at low angles that shouldn’t go in. That’s been a prevalent issue all season long, although scouts have said he looks more refined and doesn’t immediately drop to the butterfly – something that plagued him during the Hlinka Gretzky Cup last August.

But as he gets more comfortable using his size down low, while also playing against older competition in college, many scouts are confident he can fix that.

“Technically, he’s solid,” another scout said. “Yet sometimes it feels like he’s trying to ‘block’ shots instead of just ‘saving’ them. And that leads to awkward goals against. But for an 18-year-old who has the NHL size he has, he’s far ahead of most other goalies in this age group. He’s just so good at so much.”

And that’s the thing. For teams needing a quality goaltender in the draft this year, Hrabal might be the best option. He has unteachable traits, such as his huge frame, but he has to learn how to use that to his advantage. Many love what he can become, not what he is right now. Once Hrabal can make the crease his own, it’s a whole new ball game.

We’ll see what happens come June, but there’s a lot of optimism that Hrabal can become the real deal. His coaches believe it. His teammates believe it. Scouts believe it. There’s a bright future ahead for Hrabal, and it’s up to him to prove it.

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Can Michael Hrabal become the best goaltender from the 2023 NHL Draft?

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