Today, I’m going to complete my goaltending rankings with tiers 5-8. If you draft one of these guys as your #2 goalie, you’re carrying a bit of risk that they could implode. There are guys in tiers 5-7 that have upside, whether it’s needing an injury to the other goalie on the team, or being the #1 on a team with a lot of variance. Let’s get to it!
Tier Five:
17) Linus Ullmark – The goalies in this tier carry a higher level of risk than everyone before them, but there’s still an outside path to them being a fringe top 10 goalie. There’s a new coach in Boston so it’s hard to predict how the goaltending time will be split between Ullmark and Swayman. Even with Boston missing guys to open the season, I trust them to hold water. Ullmark was actually the 10th best goalie last season so we’ve seen the upside, but I don’t expect that again. If you’re in a roto league, I love taking both Ullmark and Swayman as your 2/3 and starting the Boston goalie almost every night.
18) Matt Murray – As mentioned in the offseason recap post, I hate this move for Toronto. However, Murray has a good chance to pile up wins playing behind Toronto. The percentages might be ugly, but I suppose he could clunk out a season close to what Campbell did. Murray hasn’t been good in three years, so call me skeptical.
19) Ville Husso – Husso moves to Detroit, a team on the rise, but how quickly? Also, how good is Husso? I like the gamble by Yzerman on his upside, but we just saw Nedeljkovic struggle mightily in his first season in Detroit. Again, Detroit should be better, but I don’t expect some defensive powerhouse. The upside is higher than most of these other guys so Husso slots in here.
20) Cam Talbot – Talbot moves to Ottawa, a team in a very similar situation to Detroit. The difference is that Forsberg is a bigger threat to get games for the Sens, and their defense is a complete mess. There’s a path for Detroit to be good defensively, but I don’t see how that’s possible for the Senators. Even a .917% sv% for Forsberg last season was a 2.82 GAA, so I’d only look at a Sens goalie if you can afford a weaker GAA.
21) Jonathan Quick – Petersen looms, but Quick was clearly the better goalie last season. The Kings are on the rise, so I don’t mind bumping Quick up a few spots, but at the same time, it wouldn’t shock me if Quick completely falls apart.
22) Logan Thompson – With Lehner out for the season, I suspect that Thompson gets first crack to be the #1. Brossoit will be out to start the season, and Adin Hill hasn’t shown to be much of an NHL goalie yet. Thompson does have upside, and if it’s clear that he’ll be the #1, I’ll bump him up closer to the season starting. I know Vegas suffered a lot of injuries last season, but I still don’t love where their team is currently at.
23) Eric Comrie – Comrie signed in Buffalo to be the #1. Comrie has been quite good in the NHL, but it’s such a limited sample size that we have no idea what the Sabres are going to get. He sneaks into the bottom of this tier because there’s a path to 60 starts for Comrie and the Sabres played quite well in the second half of the season.
24) Philipp Grubauer – Last season went as bad as possible for Grubauer in Seattle. His level of play was so high before last season that I can’t see a repeat of last season. The problem is that I don’t know how much better Seattle is going to be defensively, even though I like the additions they’ve made this offseason.
Tier Six: This tier is full of goalies that are the 1B’s on their team that I feel confident starting in almost all matchups, or they have legitimate upside. From this point on, I’m simply going to list goalies instead of ranking them. They’re in the order I prefer them, but it’s far more fluid than the goalies above, and depends quite a bit on who you have already plus your league size and rules. If your league rewards volume, you could be better off with goalies in Tier Seven.
Spencer Knight
Jeremy Swayman
Pavel Francouz
Anton Forsberg
Semyon Varlamov
Cal Petersen
Ilya Samsonov
Filip Gustavsson
Antti Raanta
Mackenzie Blackwood
Vitek Vanecek
Tier Seven: These players belong in one of two categories. One, they’re #1’s still with some upside, but not much. Their value would mostly come in deeper leagues The others are guys who are clearly backups and have no path to real volume barring the #1 being injured, but I would like to stream them in most of their starts.
Carter Hart
James Reimer
John Gibson
Casey DeSmith
Jaroslav Halak
Scott Wedgewood
Dan Vladar
Anthony Stolarz
Laurent Brossoit
Tier Eight: These guys are complete desperation. In a 12 man league, I have no interest at all as they can do more damage than good. It can get quite ugly for these guys, but in super deep leagues, they should get you some volume.
Elvis Merzlikins
Karel Vejmelka
Jake Allen
Adin Hill
Petr Mrazek
Kaapo Kahkonen
Alex Nedeljkovic
If a goalie doesn’t crack my top 51 goalies, then it’s pretty clear what my opinion is of them. That’ll bring my goaltending rankings to an end. I’ll be back with two posts this week on my top 40 defensemen before I move to forwards. As always, feel free to ask any questions, make any comments, or give any suggestions below. Thanks for reading, take care!
