Goalie Tiers - Part 2

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, fine folks. It's just past the halfway mark of the 2024-25 NHL season and goalies have stayed true to form being nearly impossible to predict. But here at Goaliepost, our jobs are to make the impossible possible for you. I’m going to continue to put goalies into a tier list and explain why certain guys fall into certain categories if you need a quick little guide on how things stand for a player or tandem now and going forward for the rest of the season. These rankings are not for anything but planning the rest of your year and playoffs.

Tier 3 continued

Ilya Sorokin / NYI - The three guys I have here in tier three continued, could easily be higher in these rankings, and will most likely end the season on the rise. For Sorokin, his back ups have been grabbing injuries like somebody is handing them out with a crisp hundred stapled to them. He currently sits tied for 10th in starts with Igor Shesterkin, his fellow Russian and career measuring stick. Between 2021 and 2023 (two seasons) Sorokin held a .925 through 105 games started. Last year started a bit of a trend downwards for the Islanders as a whole and Sorokin has been worse off for it, holding onto a .908 in the 91 games started since. The Islanders have won seven of their last eight, and Sorokin has been pretty locked in during it. You could do worse for a second goalie down the stretch!

Jeremy Swayman / BOS - Swayman joined the party for the end of the Bruins semi dynasty this season a few games late. He has made up for it by starting nearly every game since, to climb to fourth in the NHL in games played as a goalie this year with 39. He was also unfortunately catapulted to the number one spot in goals allowed which is kind of like showing up to your job you love to shovel snow, being thrown a spoon for a shovel and getting pushed into the elephant pens. That shovel is heavy for Jeremy so far this year, but he is still managing to put up some quality starts in between the bad outings.

Ukko Pekka Luukkonen / BUF - Luukkonen is victim to the current Buffalo curse. For what seems like four years now, drafters hem and haw all offseason about which 22-year-old on Buffalo is going to single handedly row this ship to the banks of Lake Erie. Although the likes of Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin are certainly helping, those are your only household names to run straight with the lead baton they were handed. Luukkonen sits pretty average in most stats this year including 14th in wins with 19. Interestingly enough though, he is hanging onto a .907 save percentage despite being second in goals allowed for the season. 6K should be able to stick around the .907 number going forward, since it is close to his career average. He also only has around 52% quality starts.

Tier 4

Connor Ingram & Karel Vejmelka / UTA - These two fellas have been quite average on the season. Ingram was the pseudo-starter last year until injuries hampered him early on and thrust Vejmelka into starting a ton of games. Neither has done much to write home to Arizona about in front of the new Utah crowd. Although Vejmelka has fared better with a .911 to Ingrams .884 (yikes!) there is room for improvement from Ingram, but I would have a hard time rostering these guys outside of a spot start in a favorable matchup.

Jordan Binnington / STL - Again, this low down the list it’s going to be tough to find value with save percentage and goals against average. On the other hand, the further down this list we get, chances are the higher shot totals these guys are going to be facing. Depending on your league’s set up these guys could be just as valuable as some top guys when they see volume on bad teams. Binnington has long been a mercurial guy. Outside of his temper tantrums he's been a decent NHL caliber goalie. Binnington is right up there with the big boys in starts and has some pedestrian stats otherwise. He will look to improve on his .898 on the year and pull closer to his career average of a .907 as St. Louis has an uphill battle infront of them to snag a wild card spot. Colorado, Calgary, Los Angeles and Vancouver sit ahead of them, three in playoff spots while Utah, Anaheim, and Seattle are all within 3 points behind St. Louis, so buckle up!

Jake Allen & Nico Daws / NJD - Jacob Markstrom took injured his knee last week (not actually), and is going to be out for a significant chunk of time. Jake Allen has been the fall back guy for the last few seasons after trading for him from Montreal. Allen has done well in the backup role, but the one thing that may keep him from taking the bulk of these starts going forward is contracts. Allen’s two year deal expires at the end of the season and Daws is signed until the end of next season. Daws has a very minor cap hit at 1.2 mil and when you factor in the news of the salary cap rising significantly over the next few years it is looking even better. I would be trying to find out what I have in Daws at the NHL level if at all possible before the end of this year.

Tier 5

Lukas Dostal & John Gibson / ANA - John Gibson is the face of the NHL for players in purgatory. The guy has been the best goalie on a bad team since nearly the beginning of his career in 2014-15. It’s gotta be painful to watch as the Ducks are finally starting the crawl out of the dark dank NHL basement with moss growing on their shoulders, only to have your successor doing casual Cirque du Soleil routines while keeping the puck out of the net. Gibson has been an elite goal on a subpar team for so long we forget just how good he was. If the Ducks can somehow trade him and that anchor contract, it will greatly benefit whoever receives his services since on top of being that elite goaltender he will be injected with a cocktail of purpose and a new outlook with the possible glory he’s been waiting for to close out the end of his career. Dostal is the goalie of now and the future for Anaheim. I mentioned his great play in passing but it really cannot be understated. To hold a career .907 as a member of the current Ducks shows us what he can do. Gibson’s successor still has a bit of work to do to match his career .911 with Anaheim but as the team improves, so should Dostal's numbers.

Alex Lyon & Cam Talbot / DET - Detroit has been on a hot run as of late, and I am including these two because of it. It is a good reminder that with Zero G strategies, there will always be guys waiting on the wire to grab for a spot start, or to ride for a few weeks if a team has a favorable run of games, including on slow days to grab a free extra start, or throwing in a back up or youngin in a back-to-back situation. It is hard to hit on a goalie spot start, but unless you are rostering Connor Hellebuyck or equivalent, you can generally get average or better stats in goalie categories by trying to grab a guy or two with the best matchups team wise that week. It will not always work out perfectly but the idea is that when you skipped over drafting your three goalies in say rounds 1,4, and 8 of your drafts you are going to get upgrades as follows: 1st round (100 pt player), 4th round (80 pt player), 8th round (long shot at 70 pt player). If you replace all of those skaters instead of any goalies you are gaining roughly 100 points of production over bottom of the league players. I find it easier to cobble together 3 useful goalies off of waivers than I do making up a large gap at points and all other stats. It also gives you so much more freedom in drafts if you only have to plan for two positions instead of three. The guy that writes about goalies fades them?! Yes, the more you know, the less you know about NHL goalies. That may not make sense but neither do NHL goalies a lot of the time. Good luck in the playoffs everyone!

As always everybody thank you all for reading and please give me a follow over on Twitter/X @LOGoalz. I am usually quick to respond to people for any advice and/or banter you’d like to throw my way. Have a great week everyone.