VANCOUVER — Aku Koskenvuo only played in 17 games as a sophomore at Harvard University last season, so it might be hard to expect the 21-year-old goaltender to play a significant role on the Vancouver Canucks roster in the near future.

But his recent history and similarities in power and style to another Canucks goal-scoring prospect mean this player shouldn’t be overlooked.

It would have been hard to predict two years ago that Arturs Silovs, who at age 21 had already played in 20 games in the American Hockey League and ECHL, would be Vancouver’s starting goaltender in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“They have a lot of similarities in terms of size, athleticism, speed, strength,” Canucks goaltending development coach Marko Torenius said of Silovs and Koskenvuo. “There’s a lot of things.”

Similarities include not getting much playing time at the age of 21.

Koskenvuo, who played just two games as a freshman at Harvard in the 2022-23 season, started last season with fourth-year Derek Mullahy and went 5-6-4 with a 2.95 goals-against average, .910 save percentage and two shutouts, and appears primed to be Harvard’s No. 1 goalie this season.

“It’s a really big season coming up for him,” Torenius said. “He’s been a little under the radar, but if he can get a little more game experience, I think he’ll get a little bit more confidence and you can start to see who he really is.”

Vancouver selected Koskenvuo in the fifth round (No. 137) of the 2021 NHL Draft, making him the second goaltender to be selected after Silovs, who was selected in the sixth round (No. 156) of the 2019 NHL Draft, following Ian Clark’s return to the Canucks as goaltending coach (and now director of goaltending) after seven seasons with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Six of the seven goaltenders selected during Clark’s time in Columbus played at least one game in the NHL, and Koskenvuo excels in some of the seven key attributes Clark looks for.

“He’s 10-for-10 on a couple of them,” Clark said. “He’s got prototypical size (6 feet 4 inches) and a prototypical body for the goaltending position, plus athleticism and competition and all those things I always look for.”

Koskenvuo is working to bring all of these elements together in a more controlled manner by learning the system the Canucks have in place for their goalies.

“The way I play the game is I play most of the situations the same way to make the game more systematic so there’s less fluctuation in performance,” Koskenvuo said. “How fast your head turns, where your eyes go, how your blades are on the post. It’s very small things, but it’s the small details that make up the big picture, so they’re very important and I think it’s improved a lot.”

NCAA rules prevent Torenius from taking the ice with Koskenvuo during the season, but he still flies to Boston once a season, and they talk every few weeks, videotaping and reviewing their games and sending clips of Canucks No. 1 Thatcher Demko.

“He’s starting to understand that less is more,” Torenius said. “He can trust his body, be more compact. He doesn’t need to be scattered all over the place. He’s one of the wild horses we have, and we’ve got a long way to go to get these guys back in balance.”

Koskenvuo said that Demko went through the same process and that he learned a lot from watching his videos.

“I’ve tried to grasp the fundamentals of Demko’s game and see how I can transfer that into my game, and so far it’s been helpful,” Koskenvuo said. “I love how simple his game is, how systematic he is, how controlled he is, but at the end of the day when the situation calls for it, he can let go and make big saves.”