FN’s 2025 Flames summer prospect rankings – #9: Aydar Suniev

Gang, scouts tend to be excited about upcoming draft classes, but usually they do a pretty good job reining in expectations for a draft class. So when we mention that scouts were amped up about the 2023 NHL Draft class for literally years – like, when the players being selected in 2023 were 15 or 16 years old – you can understand why hockey fans took notice.

The day before the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville, the Flames traded Tyler Toffoli to New Jersey in exchange for Yegor Sharangovich and a 2023 third-round pick. Initially, there was some fan unrest about how the team’s leading scorer couldn’t net the club a first-rounder. But in 2023, nearly early picks were more in advance of the draft because scouting staffs valued picks in 2023 so highly (as did their general managers).

And since then, the player the Flames selected with that third-round pick in 2023, forward Aydar Suniev, has emerged as a really intriguing player in their system. Suniev checks in at ninth spot on the 2025 edition of the FlamesNation summer prospect rankings.

Aydar Suniev

Left wing, shoots left
Born Nov. 16, 2004 (age 20) in Kazan, Russia
6’2”, 198 pounds
Drafted in the third round (80th overall) by Calgary in the 2023 NHL Draft

The thing that’s most impressive about Suniev – among many impressive things about him – is that he’s constantly moved to new places and new leagues, and found ways to adapt, improve and impress.

Born in November 2004 in Kazan, Russia, Suniev played hockey and excelled at it at a young age, and eventually caught on with CKSA Moskva’s youth system. He played with CSKA’s club teams for awhile, even captaining his teams on occasion, before opting to make a change and look for a new challenge.

When the 2019-20 season began, Suniev had left Russia and headed to play prep school hockey in North America. As a 14-year-old who spoke no English. He spent that season split between the Yale Jr. Bulldogs’s under-15 team and The Hill Academy’s under-16 and under-18 clubs – based on the available game information, it sounds like he started at Yale and then moved onto The Hill Academy.

That was followed by a couple seasons (2020-21 and 2021-22) primarily spent at St. Andrews College prep school in Ontario – Postmedia’s Wes Gilberton did a great job summarizing a lot of the challenges he faced while there: his team could only practice during his first season due to COVID rules, and then visa challenges prevented him from joining his team on a prolonged United States road trip.

So Suniev adapted again, joining the BCHL’s powerhouse Penticton Vees midway through the 2021-22 campaign, suiting up for the first time in mid February. He performed well in a 17-game preview, then became one of the Vees’ top players in 2022-23, just in time to become eligible for the 2023 NHL Draft. The Flames selected him in the third round, excited about his scoring potential. It probably doesn’t hurt that Suniev and the Vees won back-to-back league championships while he was there.

Suniev was on the move again, though, this time heading to college to join the University of Massachusetts Minutemen as a freshman. He spent 2023-24 learning the college game, particularly figuring out the checking and defensive side of things. He gradually figured out the nuances, and he spent 2024-25 as a sophomore that head coach Greg Carvel seemed to trust in every game situation.

Suniev signed his entry-level deal with the Flames after UMass was eliminated from the NCAA’s national championship tournament and, after a few weeks of practice with the Flames, he made his NHL debut on the final day of the regular season.

We reached out to graduating UMass Daily Collegian men’s hockey beat writer Matt Skillings for his insights on Suniev’s season:

“Aydar Suniev jumped from being a solid collegiate player in his freshman season to a legitimate NHL prospect as a sophomore. The Kazan, Russia native not only improved his production, but scored some of the most impactful goals of the season for UMass, including an overtime winner against Minnesota in the NCAA Regional Tournament. The big question mark for me after his freshman season was his offensive decision making, which he improved upon exponentially, proving he could not only score goals from anywhere in the offensive zone, but also be an impact playmaker at a high level. Suniev was one of the sturdiest, strongest offensive players in the NCAA this season and proved that he has top-6 NHL potential.”

Expectations for 2025-26

So there are two things we think we know by now: Suniev has shown a really strong ability to adapt and adjust to new challenges, and that the American Hockey League can be a really unique challenge for even really good junior and college players. If nothing else, we should expect Suniev to face challenges in 2025-26 that he’s never faced before, particularly facing grown men in a professional hockey setting.

This coming season will be the first full year of his ELC. He’s probably going to start the season in the AHL with the Calgary Wranglers. When you watch him there this coming season, remember that he’s probably going to be a bit of a work in progress. But between his smarts, size, speed, skill and shot, we’re really fascinated to see what he becomes as a pro. It may take a bit of time, but he’s shown that he’s been able to tackle a lot of unique challenges in his hockey career and come away from them a better player.