No. 24: Carson Bjarnason
2022-23 League/Team(s): Brandon Wheat Kings, WHL
2022-23 Statistics: .900 SV%, 3.08 GAA in 47 GP
Age: 18
Acquired In: 2023 NHL Draft – Round 2, Pick 51
How did Bjarnason’s 2022-23 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year?
Bjarnason’s stock is up despite a somewhat underwhelming end to an all-in-all good season. Playing his first season as the primary starter in Brandon after a 2021-22 season spent as a backup, Bjarnason took about two-thirds of the Wheat Kings’ starts in the season, ending the year with a .900 save percentage in 47 games. That’s a fairly pedestrian-looking number by itself – it’s right around average for the WHL, though it was third among 2005-born goalies – but it does need a bit of context. Brandon was one of the worst teams in the WHL last year, and the gap in performance between Bjarnason and his primary backup, Nicholas Jones, worked out to nearly an extra goal allowed per game.
Bjarnason caught enough attention in Brandon to be named to Canada’s under-18 World Juniors team in the spring, and was even their starting goaltender. Things went pretty well for him there other than a pair of nightmare contests against Sweden – the first of which, Canada’s first game at the tournament, saw him give up five goals on seven shots in the first period; the second of which, Canada’s semifinal game, saw him leave with what was reported to likely be a concussion in the first period. That may be a pretty big “other than that” to brush aside, but other than that, Bjarnason had a good experience at U18s.
Prospect evaluators, surely aware of the fact that none of the NHL or CHL’s teams exclusively face teams from Sweden, seemed pretty high on Bjarnason’s work entering draft season. TSN’s Craig Button had him ranked as the No. 24 player in the draft as well as the top-ranked goalie; other rankings were a little lower on him, but he was pretty generally seen as a player worth being taken around where the Flyers nabbed him at No. 51.
What are we expecting from Bjarnason this season? What should we be looking for from him?
For a player with Bjarnason’s athletic profile (6’3″ with good movement skills) and upside, the goal is simple: show improvement from last season. Even if Brandon doesn’t figure to be one of the best teams in the WHL again, we should expect some level of improvement from Bjarnason in terms of his just-OK save percentage as he learns to better refine his skill set into more consistent performance.
Additionally, after making his way onto that U18 team, Bjarnason should have a legitimate chance to play for Team Canada at the U20 World Juniors this coming year. There aren’t many more spots in international hockey that bring on more pressure than “goalie for Canada at World Juniors,” and while people and evaluators absolutely have before and will likely continue to go overboard in how they weight those few games on that stage, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it, so hopefully Bjarnason can make it there.
How does Bjarnason fit in the Flyers’ rebuild? Is it likely he’s going to be a part of the next good Flyers team?
That certainly seems like it’s up to him, but it’s possible. The Flyers do have a decent number of intriguing young goalie prospects at this point (though – spoilers! – you’ll only see two more profiled in this series), but with the inherent unpredictability of the position and the projection that comes with it, it’s near impossible to rank basically every non-Samuel Ersson goalie prospect in the system, to say nothing of the fact that we don’t know with certainty that Carter Hart will be around on the other side of this rebuild.
For the Flyers, the hope is that they’ve assembled a solid enough stable of young goalies that one or two of them break through and become NHL-caliber players. Bjarnason’s part of that group, and while there’s a long road from the CHL to the NHL, the guy’s already played on big stages and has shown he can handle a starter’s workload. And clearly the Flyers like what they saw in him, because they traded up to get him in the draft. There’s deserved optimism around him as a future piece on this team.
One warning sign, though: it’s very easy to read the general profile here – highly-touted WHL goalie that the Flyers took with a second-round pick that has played in big games for Team Canada at a young age – and think of a certain notable current Flyers goaltender. Fight that urge. At this comparable point in his career, Carter Hart had pretty well established himself as one of the best goalies in the WHL. Bjarnason could well become that, but there’s a steeper growth curve here that he has to climb to get there.
What do we think Bjarnason’s ultimate NHL upside is, and how likely is it that he gets to something approaching that?
The upside for Bjarnason is pretty clear. Great profile, good tools, seemingly fixable weaknesses, solid bottom-line results, and held in pretty high regard in the hockey world. It is not difficult to envision a timeline in which he turns into a starting-calibre NHL goaltender, and if that’s something the Flyers find themselves needing years down the line, this could be a team-changing pick.
Of course, goaltending prospects are notoriously difficult to project for a reason, and he wouldn’t be the first one to fail to make that leap if he does. It’s cool that he’s likely to be one of the standard-bearers at the position for Team Canada in the next two years, but for every Carter Hart that makes the leap from that position, there’s a Zachary Fucale who doesn’t. As mentioned above, the initial instinct for basically any extremely young goalie prospect, especially any who hasn’t played above juniors, should be skepticism. It’s up to him to prove that wrong.
