Wayward DP
Well-known member
okay I'm gonna do some legwork.not sure how many were ultimately good signings but it sure seemed like there was a bigger list of names last year.
2021 UFAs ---|--- Yrs/AAV ---|--- 2021 SV% --|-- 2022 SV% --|-- Change
Grubauer - 6 x 5.9 m - .922 - .889 - (.034)
Ullmark - 4 x 5 m - .917 - .917 - .000***
Mrazek - 3 x 3.8 m - .923 - .888 - (.035)
Driedger - 3 x 3.5 m - .927 - .899 - (.028)
Broken muffin man - 2 x 4.5 m - .895 - .922 - .027
Brossoit - 2 x 2.325 m - .918 - .895 - (.023)
Optimus - 2 x 2.25 m - .906 - .911 - .005
Raanta - 2 x 2 m - .905 - .912 - .007
the above are, far as I can tell, a complete list of goalies who signed multi-year UFA deals last year. four of them badly underperformed their previous season, Fred had a miraculous resurgence, and the remaining three delivered performances in line with the previous year.
so of the 8, 5 had significant variance from year to year, and two of the remaining three 'consistent' ones were Reimer and Raanta who were not really 'starters'.
Ullmark looks like a good deal but he was outplayed and replaced by Swayman.
and Fred, who looks the best of the bunch, went AWOL during the playoffs.
so other than Raanta and Reimer, most of those UFA deals look like varying shades of shit for different reasons.
I would bet on Grubauer bouncing back at some point though, would be an interesting buy low option.
in terms of some of the remaining goalie UFA contracts last year (I included all that were > $1 m):
Halak - 1 x 3.0 m - .905 - .903 - (.002)
Holtby - 1 x 2.0 m - .892 - .913 - .021
Jones - 1 x 2.0 m - .896 - .900 - .004
Rittich - 1 x 1.25 m - .901 - .886 - (.015)
Rask - 1 x 1.0 m - .913 - .844 - (.069)
***lost starter's job in playoffs
my takeaway - goalies are indeed fucking assholes, controlled by voodoo from year to year. and, perhaps this is the salient point, paying UFA prices with term for them seems like a poor fucking investment.