Goaltender Marcus Gidlöf is climbing up the NY Islanders prospect rankings

Gidlöf’s numbers have been stellar this season in the SHL, posting a 2.03 GAA and .918 SV% through 15 games for Leksands IF, pitching his first shutout of his SHL career in his last outing.

“He threw his first shutout of the season just yesterday (FEB 25) and it was a 1-0 road game thriller against Brynäs (the top team in the SHL), a team that controlled the gameplay for long stretches and put on a furious attack over the final 10 minutes of the contest.” Says Landvogt. “Overall, Gidlöf is top 5 in the SHL in GAA (2.03), SV% (.918) and Win% (.733), going 11-4 along the way.”

Gidlöf’s size is his greatest asset. For netminders of his size, sometimes movement can be an issue. But not for Gidlöf. He uses his size and length to his advantage while not giving up much speed.

“What I've noticed is that he's very athletic and has great east-west movement for a goaltender that size, at that age,” says Landvogt. “Technically, he's not completely out of puberty yet. And he has had his moments of weakness and even one rather embarrassing blunder where he let in what was basically a hard dump-in from the other team's zone, but we can definitely chalk these things up as learning experiences. He's  not only been keeping things tighter as the season progresses, he's been a rock for Leksand with wins in six of his last eight starts and points in seven of those eight games.”

Still only 19 years old, Gidlöf still needs to time to mature and gain experience in one of Europe’s top leagues. The Islanders will allow him to develop at his own speed before bringing him over to get used to the North American game.

“I think most NHL teams would be very careful and hesitant to bring him over too quickly,” says Landvogt. He's also in a good situation in Leksand and all indications are that they want nothing more than to keep planning with him as one of their goalies next season, perhaps even as the starter. Alas, the Islanders are not most teams. It's hard to predict what they'll do and in no less than Holmstrom, we have seen them bring over a top Swedish prospect quite quickly.

“Expect the various hockey pundits out there to be viewing Gidlöf as one of the Islanders' top 3-5 prospects as of this offseason.”