Yahoo Fantasy Hockey: Secret to drafting NHL goalies

(Ed. Note: We’re once again pleased to partner with Dobber Hockey to provide fantasy hockey insight throughout the NHL season. Please welcome Steve Laidlaw, the Managing Editor of DobberHockey, as your new fantasy hockey smarty-pants!)

BY STEVE LAIDLAW

Goaltending is arguably the most important position in fantasy hockey. In standard Yahoo! leagues goaltending accounts for 40 percent of the scoring, yet goaltenders only make up 17 percent of your actual roster. That means you are counting on a substantial output from a small number of players. Locking down solid goaltending is a great way to ensure you will be competitive this season.

Figuring out who to take is the trick. Over the last 10 seasons, only one goalie has managed to produce at a top-five level for more than two consecutive seasons. That goalie was Henrik Lundqvist, and he has since spent the past three seasons ranking 13^th overall. Goaltenders simply do not get much time at the top so simply going by last season’s stats may not be the wise choice.

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Goalies are also victims of circumstance. They are intrinsically tied to the fate of their team. Sure, a goalie can usually boast a decent save percentage if getting peppered by over 30 shots per game, but he isn’t likely to win many games or get too many shutouts. Acquiring a goalie on a top team is huge but that requires forecasting abilities no prognosticator is good at. Even in the era of parity, the previous season’s standings do a better job of predicting current standings than anything any individual writer can come up with. Keep in mind last season’s playoff squads as you draft for goaltending.

A very useful strategy to help you rise above the volatility of goaltending is to build tiered rankings. You cannot completely remove the inherent risk in goaltenders, but if you can grab a goalie from each of your top three tiers then you stand a good chance of competing with the rest of the teams in your league. More importantly, it provides a guide for when to consider drafting goaltenders. This means you can sit back and wait for the right moment to strike, while filling your skater stats.

The basic principle is to not draft a goalie from a tier that is still full, but rather to wait until a tier might get emptied out and then strike with a goalie pick out of that tier. Here are my tiered rankings for standard leagues, which you may use as a blueprint:

Odds are you aren’t getting a top tier goalie unless you are using one of your top two picks on one. You can draft the goalie of your choice as high as round one, and hope that it causes the rest of the managers in your league to panic and start a run on goalies. This could force some managers into taking second tier goalies extremely high and allow some of the stronger skaters to slide to you a little later than they might have otherwise.

The upshot of grabbing a goalie in the first round is that you will likely have your choice of the top tier options. So if you have an affinity for a specific goalie then being the first to act gives you your pick of the litter.

However, if you have no affinity or perhaps for you have a top five pick and don’t want to burn it on a goalie, then the good news is that Schneider is frequently dropping a little lower so you can get him in the late second or early third round. Schneider’s floor is a boatload of starts with a .500 record and great rate stats. If the Devils take a leap, he instantly becomes a candidate for top fantasy goalie.

Our second tier is comprised primarily of entrenched starters with a long track record of success. Jones and Quick are going off the board like the top five goalies they were last season, however they were merely average in terms of save percentage. Any slippage in wins and they won’t return good value at their current ADP.

The two question marks in this tier are Gibson and Allen, whom no one is certain how they will hold up as starters. It seems like every year new starters face these questions with recent examples like Holtby, Rask, Schneider and Jones all doing just fine in their first go-around as full-time starters.

It is worth mentioning that the injury concerns with Gibson are real, but they haven’t affected his ADP if you are going with him, you must do so head first.

Rinne is going spectacularly high for a goalie that appeared to be washed up for much of last season and boasts a subpar save percentage of just 0.912 over the past four seasons. Nashville appears to be an elite team so even average play from Rinne could yield 40 wins but continued subpar play could cost Rinne his job entirely. Rinne’s massive contract likely ensures his job security but he is far from a reliable option in net.

The best value here is either Dubnyk or Rask. Rask took a tumble last season thanks to a nightmare month of October. After that Rask went 28-22-8 with a 0.918 save percentage, which is perfectly average. The Bruins defense likely won’t be improved but Rask should be able to provide average numbers across 60-65 starts, making him a dependable option.

Dubnyk, meanwhile, had essentially the exact same season as Jones, just behind a weaker team that left him with four fewer wins. Of all the second tier options Dubnyk is going the latest, offering the most possible value.

Question marks surround this third tier of goaltenders because they all have elite backups champing at the bit for more starts. They are also potentially great options as starters for playoff teams.

Fleury’s ADP has been climbing over the past week following news of backup Matt Murray’s broken hand so you’ll likely need to grab him earlier than listed.

The best value here is easily Mason, who has been elite at best and average at worst since joining the Flyers. You have to like the high ceiling, high floor combination here, especially for where he is going.

Now we get into the entrenched starters playing for non-playoff teams. Both Elliott and Andersen are leaving tandem situations for contenders where they looked great over short stretches. Their ADP indicates fantasy managers have confidence in their ability to translate stats to their new clubs while avoiding injury. Seems risky.

The better bets on the board are Varlamov and Bobrovsky who have put up elite fantasy seasons in the past. You can wait on these options late into the draft and hope they rebound. In particular, Colorado has a new coach, which offers Varlamov a new beginning. Meanwhile, Bobrovsky is coming off an injury-riddled 2015-16 season. If healthy, Bobrovsky should return to elite status, even if the Blue Jackets don’t win too many games.

In a lot of formats you can get more out of an elite backup than you can a weak starter. This is especially true if that elite backup has starter potential. The fifth tier is comprised of the top backups available.

Hellebuyck makes a great flyer because we saw what he could do in a mid-season cameo last winter. Hellebuyck excelled despite playing behind a Jets team that could never get it together. He must win the job in training camp but we should all accuse the Jets of tanking if Hellebuyck isn’t the starter on opening night.

Lastly, we have the extreme tandem starters of the league. There’s an old saying that if you have two starting quarterbacks, you have no starting quarterbacks. You can apply the same logic to goaltending and the situations in Dallas, Vancouver, Carolina and Winnipeg (should Hellebuyck start in the minors) reflect this sentiment perfectly.

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Niemi and Lehtonen should pile up wins but neither one has distinguished himself in the Stars’ crease. You better have both if you are investing in this situation. It’s worth adding that the Stars likely got worse on defense following the departure of Jason Demers. This does not bode well.

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Steve Laidlaw is the Managing Editor of DobberHockey. Follow him on Twitter @SteveLaidlaw.

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