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Around the League 2019-2024 Edition

Crap shoot. Boils down to preference I suppose. I prefer going with the guy I know. One in the hand as opposed to two in the bush so to speak.
no goalie draft pick though is ever 'one in the hand'. they're stilly risky with a multi-year runway before they contribute.
 
I mean we would all love to have a reliable starter, locked in for 10 years. But we don't, so thats not an option. They've drafted a bunch of goalies though the last few years, so we'll see.
 
Seriously though, if we're talking about 1st round picks only over the last 20 years.

Lehtonen - 2nd - .912 career sv%
Cam Ward - 25th - .908
Hannu Toivenen - 28th - .890
MAF - 1st - .913
Montoya - 6th - .908
Dubnyk - 14th - .914
Schwarz - 17th - .809
Schneider - 26th - .918
Price - 5th - .917
Rask - 21st - .921
Bernier - 12th - .912
Helenius - 15th - 1.000 (1 game)
Varlamov - 23rd - .916
Irving - 26th - .902
Pickard - 18th - 0 games played
McCollum - 20th - 0 games played
Campbell - 11th - .916
Visentin - 27th - .901 (1 game)
Vasilevsky - 19th - .919
Subban - 24th - .898
Samsonov - 22nd - .902
Oettinger - 26th - .913
Knight - 13th - .909
Askarov - 11th - 0 games
Cossa - 15th - 0 games

I'd argue that only a few of those guys turned out to be worth the draft slot. Not that other positions can't bust of course.

Definitely:
Schneider - Elite tandem guy became elite starter until injury fucked him, I'll take that with a pick in the 20's.
Price - Was really only the goalie that his reputation proclaimed him as for a few years in his career but over the first 12 seasons of his career he was only bad in 3 of those seasons. Elite in 4 or 5 of them.
Rask - For over a decade wobbled between good and elite without ever being bad.
Vasilevksy - Needs no explanation

Maybe, kinda, sorta
Varlamov - Was terrible almost as often as he was awesome but 5 seasons of .920+ is hard to be upset with.
MAF - probably controversial to put here and not up there, but so fucking mercurial. Losing the job to Murray only to have Murray be the guy in back to back cups kind of hurts his legacy
Cam Ward - Weird career. Has an out of nowhere voodoo cup run, was really only better than average 2-3 times in his career. But voodoo cup runs still get your name on the thing.
Dubnyk -Good pro starter for a long time, much better to pick one at 14 than 2 though.

Ehhh....
Lehtonen - Maybe moves up a tier if he stayed healthy, but at 2nd overall you need a franchise guy. He wasn't. Good pro starter for a long time though.
Bernier - His scholarship on the continent of africa aside, he was really only an okay tandem goalie. Gotta be hoping for more than that out of a 1st rounder
Campbell - There's time to move up a tier if he establishes something resembling the last 80 games of his career as a thing for 4-5 more years. One year as an average to average plus 1A is a disappointing use of an 11th overall

Too Early but hopeful
Knight, Oettinger, Askarov, Cossa

Swing and a miss
Samosonov, Montoya, Subban

Oof
The rest
 
I mean we would all love to have a reliable starter, locked in for 10 years. But we don't, so thats not an option. They've drafted a bunch of goalies though the last few years, so we'll see.
Yeah. Who's in charge of goalies now?
 
It's not. Every 4-5 years a really good goalie is coming. If it was a priority you'd have one.
in the last four years there has been Oettinger and Knight basically. one good rookie season from Oettinger who is far from established. Knight has struggled.

again, hardly a sure thing, and even if it was, takes like a half decade before you know.

again, I support drafting goalies. I just don't agree that you can expect to acquire a starter via draft simply by turning your mind to it.
 
Seriously though, if we're talking about 1st round picks only over the last 20 years.

Lehtonen - 2nd - .912 career sv%
Cam Ward - 25th - .908
Hannu Toivenen - 28th - .890
MAF - 1st - .913
Montoya - 6th - .908
Dubnyk - 14th - .914
Schwarz - 17th - .809
Schneider - 26th - .918
Price - 5th - .917
Rask - 21st - .921
Bernier - 12th - .912
Helenius - 15th - 1.000 (1 game)
Varlamov - 23rd - .916
Irving - 26th - .902
Pickard - 18th - 0 games played
McCollum - 20th - 0 games played
Campbell - 11th - .916
Visentin - 27th - .901 (1 game)
Vasilevsky - 19th - .919
Subban - 24th - .898
Samsonov - 22nd - .902
Oettinger - 26th - .913
Knight - 13th - .909
Askarov - 11th - 0 games
Cossa - 15th - 0 games

I'd argue that only a few of those guys turned out to be worth the draft slot. Not that other positions can't bust of course.

Definitely:
Schneider - Elite tandem guy became elite starter until injury fucked him, I'll take that with a pick in the 20's.
Price - Was really only the goalie that his reputation proclaimed him as for a few years in his career but over the first 12 seasons of his career he was only bad in 3 of those seasons. Elite in 4 or 5 of them.
Rask - For over a decade wobbled between good and elite without ever being bad.
Vasilevksy - Needs no explanation

Maybe, kinda, sorta
Varlamov - Was terrible almost as often as he was awesome but 5 seasons of .920+ is hard to be upset with.
MAF - probably controversial to put here and not up there, but so fucking mercurial. Losing the job to Murray only to have Murray be the guy in back to back cups kind of hurts his legacy
Cam Ward - Weird career. Has an out of nowhere voodoo cup run, was really only better than average 2-3 times in his career. But voodoo cup runs still get your name on the thing.
Dubnyk -Good pro starter for a long time, much better to pick one at 14 than 2 though.

Ehhh....
Lehtonen - Maybe moves up a tier if he stayed healthy, but at 2nd overall you need a franchise guy. He wasn't. Good pro starter for a long time though.
Bernier - His scholarship on the continent of africa aside, he was really only an okay tandem goalie. Gotta be hoping for more than that out of a 1st rounder
Campbell - There's time to move up a tier if he establishes something resembling the last 80 games of his career as a thing for 4-5 more years. One year as an average to average plus 1A is a disappointing use of an 11th overall

Too Early but hopeful
Knight, Oettinger, Askarov, Cossa

Swing and a miss
Samosonov, Montoya, Subban

Oof
The rest
Ok but what about the other part of it? Your organizational strength is finding forwards. The D you tend to trade for and the G? That's the oof. Trade, UFA, dice game.

Why not take the run at a highly touted guy when you don't really need to keep stockpiling forwards?
 
again, I support drafting goalies. I just don't agree that you can expect to acquire a starter via draft simply by turning your mind to it.
Bergevin for a decade: Trading for a center is hard. Very hard.

Hughes in a month: hold my beer

He found Dach and word I've heard today is they would have gone after PLD next.

Point? Motivation.

Hughes had to go out and get a top 15 pick first to do it. If you want a guy, you go get him.
 
Ok but what about the other part of it? Your organizational strength is finding forwards. The D you tend to trade for and the G? That's the oof. Trade, UFA, dice game.

Why not take the run at a highly touted guy when you don't really need to keep stockpiling forwards?

What's wrong with the D we trade for..?
 
Ok but what about the other part of it? Your organizational strength is finding forwards. The D you tend to trade for and the G? That's the oof. Trade, UFA, dice game.

Why not take the run at a highly touted guy when you don't really need to keep stockpiling forwards?

Because the "highly touted guy" tends to flop or otherwise not be worth it. The better play is to prioritize goalies in the middle of the draft.

There's a better goalie available in the 3rd round onward in more or less every draft than the "highly touted" guy.

2010
Highly Touted - Campbell, Visentin
Big Brain - Grubauer, Mrazek, Andersen

2012
HT - Vasy, Subban
BB - Helly, Ullmark

2015
HT - Samsonov
BB - Hill

2017
HT - Oettinger
BB - Swayman
 
Nothing. The point is organizational strength. Yours isn't G. Spend a little more draft capital to compensate.

Its just what I would do but ask @Deckie007 , I'm weird about goalies.
I mean, we have been. We're just not burning first round picks on non-existent franchise goalie prospects
 
The biggest thing with goalies though is that you need to have a long, long term vision with them. There are no 2018 draftee goalies that had any impact last year. 3 2017 goalies did anything at all (2 had real impact). 1 2016 draftee has had something of an impact (not all of it good...Carter Hart) . Nothing much good out of 2015. 2014 and back you start to see real impact though.

8 fucking years ago. This has to be burnt into your organizational DNA.
 
The pick we used on the goalie this year we actually didn't have on Friday. We traded into the fourth round because there was a guy we liked in that round.
 
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