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!
14 teamer h2h dynasty with hits, blocks, PPP, SHP, GWG, shots, shot %, everything else that’s in standard too.
keep max 25 and prospect list max is 10. 4 round slow draft.
for sure kept:
C (2): zibanejad, t.thompson (had owned as prospect, dropped, got back anyway), kadri, horvat, ROR
LW (2): j.robertson, verhaeghe, skinner, p.krebs
RW (2): marner, tarasenko, boldy (LW), fiala (LW), arvidsson (LW)
W (2)
F (1)
D (5): gudas, petry, durzi, e.karlsson, pulock, r.sandin (appears i can NA later), chairot
G (2): c.petersen, l.thompson, lehner (IR’d), f.gustavsson (has to be up)
IR/IR+ (10 each)
NA (2, so really prospect list can be 12, but if somebody’s on your roster and they are up in real life, can’t be sent down even if their games played would’ve made them eligible for list, games played is also very low to stash at under 25 but forced up only comes up now in preseason)
current prospect list (10): denisenko, m.dipietro (goalies are VERY hard to come by in this league, tons of owners that almost never really compete hoard them hoping to trade them, i scratch by and sometimes barely make the mins, but get 1-3rd every year and haven’t traded for any goalies to those owners), perunovich, edvinsson, perfetti, c.addison, j.pelletier, chmelevski
that above leaves 2 for drafting. sound bout right (or anybody up over who i’m keeping etc)
(2): other options:(due to IR+ tags can likely draft more than 2)
F:oshie (hard to drop but somebody has to be), stastny, zucker
D: ellis, muzzin, risto, hague, borowecki
G: kallgren (the type able to easily add from FA, as was l.thompson)
only real negative i can see besides goalie depth is lack of hits/blocks for most of those wingers.
could be oshie over skinner/arvidsson maybe to get some more hits into that.
oops, forgot, k.kostin has to be up as part of the max 25, no way he’s above those.
To your later point, I can’t see throwing back either Skinner or Arvidsson, too many goals and shots to throw back. I really can’t see adjusting those forwards at all, as much as I’d like to find room for Oshie. I don’t have much hope for Sandin unless he gets traded, but I don’t want to throw him back for that reason. I like Hague quite a bit, but don’t see room. I’d have a hard time throwing back Risto though with those hits and blocks. He just seems like a guy Torts is going to play for way too many minutes.
yeah on skinner/arvidsson, too many goals/PPP/shots to drop for oshie (also his injuries probably aren’t getting better at his age how he plays, while we have more than enough stash spots his totals still probably don’t end up great for points/shots do to that).
hague i like too. you think risto over chairot due to risto’s very elite hits/blocks (not quite gudas level, but close). these are IR/IR+ stashable right now, opening up draft slot(s) if kept: risto, hague (LR IR), ellis, borowecki,
also, i could keep risto or hague esp (he’s got IR LT, risto DTD tag), stash them, draft 2 prospects with rounds 1 and 2, draft somebody i didn’t keep later in round 3 (ellis or whichever of risto/hague weren’t kept over say chariot)
That’s tough because Chiarot could end up playing with Seider. I think Chiarot is washed, but if he gets the minutes, he’ll have crazy hits and blocks too. You have a better idea of who is going to be available in a draft like this, I have a really tough time gauging the value of having that pick vs one of those two D.
picks are mostly the just drafted prospects, many teams run out of space (other than just adding veterans not kept like risto/muzzin/ellis would be here). yeah noticed chiarot on top pairing, which is why that was default. stick with that.
risto was out in FA in season late with other D men hurt (so was muzzin, borowecki) so those guys obtainable even later.
who is your favorite mid round goalie pick this year? Think Im gonna draft one mid round and then stream the 2nd spot or wait for a breakout.. last year I got Markstrom and Knight mid round but knight was a huge disapointment
I haven’t looked at early ADP at all to know who is considered a mid round goalie. Are you talking guys outside of my top 10? Outside of my top 15 or 20? Let me know and I’ll give you a better answer
GREAT question Shitwolf! I too grabbed Markstrom in round 12 last season! So, who is this season’s Markstrom? Campbell, Georgiev or Thompson maybe?
Thompson is definitely in consideration for lower end guys. The upside is there for Georgiev, but I’m skeptical about his actual ability. Campbell I like, but hard to see an Edmonton goalie have that kind of season with their style of play.
ya I am thinking about tier 3 to 4 probably because I doubt I will want to grab any of those early guys. With my league counting wins and losses I would want a goalie on a winning team for sure that gets volume. I enjoyed streaming backup goalies on good teams vs bad opponents a lot last year so I don’t care that much for a #2 with my leagues cats way more player heavy.
He might not get the volume, but there’s a chance Georgiev does, and if he does, he seems like your guy. Thompson even later on, I could see him running with the job. I expect Binnington to get a lot of volume too, but obviously that comes with a lot of risk.
I think this might be the lowest I’ve seen Merzlikins ranked. I wouldn’t mind hearing a more fleshed-out response to his ranking! I haven’t done much digging into him on my own, I’ll assume CBJ had middling shots against. There are also those who say his mind wasn’t right after the Kivlenieks tragedy. Seems like Korpisalo is becoming less and less of a threat. I feel like there’s enough upside to raise him a tier or two.
He probably should be in the tier above in retrospect. It was more proving a point that I have zero interest in owning Elvis this year (I didn’t even rank Korpisalo, he’s dreadful). A 3.22 GAA is so bad that you can’t recover from it, even if you had Igor. It’s more the system that Columbus plays rather than Elvis’ talent. I think he’s a solid goaltender, but they’re an extremely offensive team that is horrible defensively. That problem gets exacerbated by Gaudreau’s arrival. Their only add on the blueline is Gudbranson who is a massive negative.
My question that I have for you is, what do you think his upside truly is? Let’s say 80% outcome. He won less than half of his starts every season of his career. Let’s say he gets to half if CBus gets a little better. Bump his GAA is 2.8 and his save percentage .915? That’s fairly close to what Fleury did last season. Fleury was the 24th best goalie last season, and that’s with winning 38 of his 59 games, something simply unattainable for Elvis. That would be getting him back to his numbers with Torts two seasons ago in a system that is close to the complete opposite.
I don’t plan on owning any goalies in Tier 7-8 in a 12 team league unless it’s a roto league and say, I own Igor and I want to stream Halak every time he starts and play Rangers goalie ever night. Now, if your league settings reward getting a lot of starts from your goalies, either by including extra categories or you’re in a super deep league, then Elvis should be in Tier 6. If you’re in a 10 or 12 man league, then I think he does more damage than good if he was your #3 goalie.
Hey Viz I could use some advice. I’m in a deeper league (20) and my goalies are Fleury, Ullmark and Sandstrom. W, SV%, GAA, SO. So no Saves volume category.
FAAB is about to open up and I have an opportunity to spend a bunch of the money I traded for in Reimer and drop Sandstrom.
There are other, better players on the wire that I could spend my money on though. Like Garland, who got dropped during the playoffs. A couple of Dmen too.
Do you think Sandstrom is THAT much worse than Reimer? Long term no idea what Sandstrom is.
Thank you
Short answer, yes, I think Sandstrom is a lot worse than Reimer.
Sandstrom looks like the backup in Philly right now, mostly because of necessity. It was supposed to be Fedotov, but with his issues in Russia, he’s not going to be here this year. Sandstrom has talent, but he’s been extremely inconsistent in the AHL. He has a few higher ranked prospect goalies (at this point, anyways), coming up the system behind him. This will be his one opportunity to show he can be an NHL goalie. While it could work out, whether in Philly or somewhere else if he shows well, there’s also a realistic chance that he plays < 20 games this season and never sees the NHL again outside of emergency callup. On the other hand, Reimer will be splitting action, and there’s a good chance he gets moved at the trade deadline to a better team whose goalie is injured. He’s a solid #2 goalie in a 20 man league, where we have no idea what Sandstrom will be, but even his best case scenario doesn’t approach Reimer’s floor.