The Ravensbergen file (v2): scouted, plus the Augustine measuring stick he inherits
Correction from v1: the first draft of this said MSU "produced Will Smith." That was wrong, and gratuitously so. Smith played at Boston College (2023-24, 71 points in 41 games), not Michigan State. The program Ravensbergen is actually walking into just produced Trey Augustine, which turns out to be the more useful fact anyway. Discard the prior Ravensbergen draft; this one supersedes it.
He is the No. 1 prospect in the system, the entire second ticket of the goaltending thesis, and the repo had invoked his name a dozen-plus times without once writing down what he is. So: the verified scouting file, and then the measuring stick he inherits, because he is about to step into the exact crease one of hockey's best goalie prospects just vacated.
The tools and the track record
Six-foot-five, 190 pounds, born November 2006, a rare right-catching goalie (the same uncommon configuration as Askarov). Drafted 30th in 2025, the second goalie off the board, the consensus top goalie in his class entering his draft year. Wheeler's read on the tools is glowing: smooth in the net for his size, smart reads and anticipation, post-to-post length, sharp challenging angles, competitive fire. "The tools are all there. That's what the Sharks are betting on."
| Prince George (WHL) | GP / record | SV% / GAA | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 (draft minus one) | 38, 26-4 | .907 / 2.46 | The breakout; .931 playoff SV%, a WHL rookie benchmark |
| 2024-25 (DRAFT year) | 51, 33-13 | .901 / 3.00 | "Good without first-rounder numbers"; a hip injury cost him the gym |
| 2025-26 (post-draft) | 46, 32-13 | .919 / 2.51 | WHL Goaltender of the Year (Del Wilson Trophy) |
The honest middle row: his actual draft year was a .901, good not great. The encouraging shape is the bounce to a Goaltender-of-the-Year .919 after. The two flags Wheeler names: he has looked vulnerable and frozen and gives up low-danger shots through his body, which is, almost word for word, Askarov's exact flaw, and he is lean with the whole upside gated behind a body he has "never really worked out." Real tools, real leaks, an unpulled lever.
The measuring stick: Trey Augustine
Here is why the MSU detail matters more than any fun fact about who else went there. Ravensbergen steps into the net just vacated by Trey Augustine, a Detroit prospect, a US World Junior starter, and one of the top goalie prospects in all of hockey, now graduating to the AHL. Same program, same conference, same building, often the same opponents, the same Ryan-Miller-adjacent development environment, shifted about 21 months. That makes Augustine the cleanest possible year-over-year benchmark, a controlled experiment that runs itself. This is the comparison to track continually.
| Augustine at MSU | GP | SV% | GAA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 (freshman) | 35 | .915 | 2.96 |
| 2024-25 (sophomore) | 30 | .924 | 2.08 |
| 2025-26 (junior) | 34 | .929 | 2.11 |
Augustine climbed .915 to .924 to .929 across three MSU years and is now a top-tier pro prospect. That is the ladder. Ravensbergen's 2026-27 freshman line against Augustine's .915 is the first and cleanest checkpoint: match or beat it and he is on or ahead of a top-prospect trajectory in a genuinely controlled comparison; fall short of .910 and the WHL hardware starts to look like a very good WHL goalie rather than a future NHL starter. One honest caveat to hold the whole way: they are different goalies, not just different years. Augustine is a compact (6-1), left-catching, technical goalie with elite USA pedigree; Ravensbergen is a bigger (6-5), right-catching, tools-and-athleticism bet drafted higher (30th to Augustine's 41st), which arguably sets the bar at "match Augustine," not "approach him." Weight the save-percentage trend over the stylistic noise.
The verdict
A legitimately high-end goalie prospect, correctly the system's top prospect by pedigree, and still a lottery ticket, because every goalie is. And now he comes with a built-in answer key.
The tools and the Goaltender-of-the-Year season are real and rare; goaltending is also the least projectable position in the sport, his absolute level has touched "very good" exactly once, and the upside is collateralized by an unbuilt body. That is the entire point of holding him as ticket two behind Askarov, not because either is a sure thing, but because neither is. What Augustine gives us is rare in prospect tracking: a clean, same-program benchmark that tells us each season whether Ravensbergen is tracking toward the top-goalie-prospect tier or merely flirting with it. Watch the freshman save percentage in March. Against .915, it will say more than any scouting report.
Both players' season totals verified from the NHL official API (landing endpoints, June 14, 2026; Ravensbergen id 8485373, Augustine id 8484141); Ravensbergen's WHL line and the Del Wilson Trophy cross-confirmed by the McKeen's/THN clippings; Will Smith's Boston College year confirmed from his NHL landing page. Scouting reads per Wheeler's prospect-pool profile. The Augustine benchmark is now a living section in docs/prospects/MSU-pipeline.md, to update each MSU season.
