Blues' Love Harenstam Omitted From Top NHL Goalie Prospects List

[TBone]

Blues' Love Harenstam Omitted From Top NHL Goalie Prospects List

Julian Gaudio
The Hockey News
Wed, July 15, 2026

St. Louis Blues goaltending prospect Love Harenstam was omitted from The Athletic's top 20 NHL-drafted goaltending prospects.

Yesterday, The Athletic revealed its top 100 NHL-drafted skaters, which featured four Blues prospects, Tynan Lawrence, Dalibor Dvorsky, Justin Carbonneau, and Adam Jiricek, with Otto Stenberg and Theo Lindstein named as honorable mentions.

Like Stenberg and Lindstein, Harenstam was named an honorable mention, just missing the top 20 list.

It's quite surprising to see Harenstam miss out, as he had a stellar 2025-26 season. Highlighted by a gold-medal win at the World Junior Championship, where he was named best goaltender, the 19-year-old has emerged as a potential draft steal, with the Blues selecting Harenstam in the sixth round of the 2025 draft.

In addition to his world juniors dominance, Harenstam was named rookie of the year and goaltender of the year in HockeyAllsvenskan, Sweden's second professional league. He posted a stellar .920 save percentage in 32 games, although his club, Sodertalje SK, fell short of earning promotion to the SHL.

Then, when the regular season was complete, Harenstam was named to Team Sweden's World Championship roster.

Harenstam will return to Sodertalje for the 2026-27 season and will likely be the starting netminder again for Team Sweden at the world juniors.

Harenstam has been a rapid riser, and although he was left off the list this time around, come next year, he could find his name not only on these rankings but quite high as well.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/blues ... ztJdQ-sz0L

[TAFKAP]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

[Frank Underwood]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

Agreed. I still subscribe because I’m getting it for $1 per month. That’s about what it’s worth. For the record, I looked at Wheeler’s top 20 goalie prospects and I’d take Love over probably 15 of them (although I freely admit I’m not a goaltending expert).

[Absolut]

Dont love their rankings.

[hornetfb52]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

The Athletic or the crossword puzzles?

[zamadoo]

Underestimating our Swedes, eh?

[TAFKAP]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

The Athletic or the crossword puzzles?

The Athletic. My wife LOVES the NYT crossword puzzles. I'm more of a pub trivia guy, not really good at the puzzles. She runs them with a timer.

[2forDiving]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

Agreed. I still subscribe because I’m getting it for $1 per month. That’s about what it’s worth. For the record, I looked at Wheeler’s top 20 goalie prospects and I’d take Love over probably 15 of them (although I freely admit I’m not a goaltending expert).

I believe if the Blues traded Finley for McDavid The Athletic headline would read, Blues acquire McDavid, Get Older and Smaller.

[STL fan in MN]

Wheeler does a solid job evaluating players in their draft years but his work for years now has suggested he then doesn’t stay up with most of the players and then basically just ranks them based on how his viewed them as 17 yr olds.

I don’t care enough to try to determine if Harenstam should be considered one of the 10 best goalie prospects in the game but regardless, he had a fantastic D+1 season, especially for a 6th rd pick.

I’m not surprised Wheeler wouldn’t elevate a kid drafted in the 6th rd just a year ago all the way into the top-10 based on just 1 good season. But these rankings also mean very little. Mean even less when it comes to goalies.

[dhsux]

Well put MN but just curious....would you say he is not on top of or not well suited to pick the top 5 guys?

Or is the whole top 10/20 just a (bleep) shoot?

[SameOldBlues]

It's The Athletic. When they first started, it was fantastic. Then they realized that their business model doesn't work. The NYT just made it worse. I cancelled my sub in 2021. I could still read it because my wife is a NYT subscriber for her crossword puzzles. They aren't accurate or interesting enough to bother.

Agreed. I still subscribe because I’m getting it for $1 per month. That’s about what it’s worth. For the record, I looked at Wheeler’s top 20 goalie prospects and I’d take Love over probably 15 of them (although I freely admit I’m not a goaltending expert).

That’s the only reason I keep subscribing too, aint no way id pay full price. For a buck a month tho, ya cant beat it, even with their penchant for clickbait krap and other hum drum gooberish content.

[STL fan in MN]

Well put MN but just curious....would you say he is not on top of or not well suited to pick the top 5 guys?

Or is the whole top 10/20 just a (bleep) shoot?

I’d say Wheeler doesn’t do a great job of keeping up with prospects post draft. But how could he? Let’s say he makes a top 10 for each team. To do that, he’d need to evaluate 15-20 prospects from each team to properly have a solid opinion of which ones were the 10 best. That’d require tracking 480 to 640 players, on top of the 150-200ish he would track for the current draft. It’s why lists coming from one singular person that try to be that encompassing are basically near useless.

IMO, his top 100 prospects list is basically just a merging of what they thought of them in their draft years with him taking into account the new data on some of them that he’s seen since then but no one person can successfully track 600-800 different players each year.

[dhsux]

Well put MN but just curious....would you say he is not on top of or not well suited to pick the top 5 guys?

Or is the whole top 10/20 just a (bleep) shoot?

I’d say Wheeler doesn’t do a great job of keeping up with prospects post draft. But how could he? Let’s say he makes a top 10 for each team. To do that, he’d need to evaluate 15-20 prospects from each team to properly have a solid opinion of which ones were the 10 best. That’d require tracking 480 to 640 players, on top of the 150-200ish he would track for the current draft. It’s why lists coming from one singular person that try to be that encompassing are basically near useless.

IMO, his top 100 prospects list is basically just a merging of what they thought of them in their draft years with him taking into account the new data on some of them that he’s seen since then but no one person can successfully track 600-800 different players each year.

I do get that but does the wobbliness of his picks (or anyones) apply to the very top of that class?

Otherwise I would think he would have greater success in ranking 1-10 than 90-100.

Does that make sense?

[Galatians221jb1]

No Love. So sad.

[BluesDom]

Love love!
Let's see what love Love gets this year. Wishing Love all the best! Definately hoping Love gets more love next year.

[STL fan in MN]

Well put MN but just curious....would you say he is not on top of or not well suited to pick the top 5 guys?

Or is the whole top 10/20 just a (bleep) shoot?

I’d say Wheeler doesn’t do a great job of keeping up with prospects post draft. But how could he? Let’s say he makes a top 10 for each team. To do that, he’d need to evaluate 15-20 prospects from each team to properly have a solid opinion of which ones were the 10 best. That’d require tracking 480 to 640 players, on top of the 150-200ish he would track for the current draft. It’s why lists coming from one singular person that try to be that encompassing are basically near useless.

IMO, his top 100 prospects list is basically just a merging of what they thought of them in their draft years with him taking into account the new data on some of them that he’s seen since then but no one person can successfully track 600-800 different players each year.

I do get that but does the wobbliness of his picks (or anyones) apply to the very top of that class?

Otherwise I would think he would have greater success in ranking 1-10 than 90-100.

Does that make sense?

If we’re talking the top-10 skaters then yes, I would expect him to have seen those guys enough to have an honest opinion on them.

But if we’re talking a top-10 of goalies, then no. Most goalies are picked in Round 2 at the earliest, most later. And that’s the range of players where Wheeler seems to not really keep up on. So no, I don’t think his goalie list is very good. I mean, he even lists one of the guys’ upside as being able to become a decent backup. There’s 32 starters in the league at any one time. So there shouldn’t really be a guy ranked as one of the best goalies in the game whose potential at this point is “decent backup.” Harenstam absolutely has NHL starter potential. Is he likely to hit that? Probably not but that’s because it’s super hard to project 18 yr old goalies and the basic math of success/failure, not really anything to do with his performance so far.

You really just have to wait and see sometimes with goalies.

That said, I think sometimes people simply throw up their hands too much when it comes to goalies. Saying “goalies are voodoo.” Or that they can’t really ever be projected. Heck, one of the top analytics guys out there whenever he discusses a goalie, nearly everytime his entire analysis is “X is a goalie.” so emphasize how unpredictable they are. But to me, that’s lazy. To me, it’s an indication that there’s a ton of growth opportunity in the area of analysis and analytics when it comes to the goaltending position if even the fancy math folks are basically offering no analysis on goalie prospects. They just haven’t found what they need to measure yet to help predict future success/failure. Whichever team(s) figure that out first will have a huge advantage IMO.